GLOBAL HEALTH CRISIS (EPISODE. 1)

Despite incredible improvements in health since
1950, there are still a number of challenges, which
should have been easy to solve. Consider the
following:
One billion people lack access to health care
systems.
36 million deaths each year are caused by
noncommunicable diseases, such as
cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and
chronic lung diseases. This is almost two-
thirds of the estimated 56 million deaths each
year worldwide. (A quarter of these take place
before the age of 60.)
Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the
number one group of conditions causing death
globally. An estimated 17.5 million people died
from CVDs in 2005, representing 30% of all
global deaths. Over 80% of CVD deaths occur
in low- and middle-income countries.
Over 7.5 million children under the age of 5 die
from malnutrition and mostly preventable
diseases, each year.
In 2008, some 6.7 million people died of
infectious diseases alone, far more than the
number killed in the natural or man-made
catastrophes that make headlines. (These are
the latest figures presented by the World
Health Organization.)
AIDS/HIV has spread rapidly. UNAIDS
estimates for 2008 that there are roughly:
33.4 million living with HIV
2.7 million new infections of HIV
2 million deaths from AIDS
Tuberculosis kills 1.7 million people each year,
with 9.4 million new cases a year.
1.6 million people still die from pneumococcal
diseases every year, making it the number one
vaccine-preventable cause of death worldwide.
More than half of the victims are children. (The
pneumococcus is a bacterium that causes
serious infections like meningitis, pneumonia
and sepsis. In developing countries, even half
of those children who receive medical
treatment will die. Every second surviving child
will have some kind of disability.)
Malaria causes some 225 million acute
illnesses and over 780,000 deaths, annually.
164,000 people, mostly children under 5, died
from measles in 2008 even though effective
immunization costs less than 1 US dollars and
has been available for more than 40 years.
These and other diseases kill more people each
year than conflict alone.



°°°Source:> www.globalissues.org