Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death in women.
Contaminated food is a major cause of diarrhea, substantially contributing to malnutrition and killing about 2.2 million people each year, most of them children.
Such lifestyle factors such as cigarette smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, little physical activity and low dietary calcium intake are risk factors for osteoporosis as well as for many other non-communicable diseases.
A safe and nutritionally adequate diet is a basic individual right and an essential condition for sustainable development, especially in developing countries.
We are also in the process of defining how best to work together with food and other companies to address diet and physical activity factors in order to prevent chronic diseases.
Investing in health will produce enormous benefits.
You cannot achieve environmental security and human development without addressing the basic issues of health and nutrition.
During my nearly five years as director-general of WHO, high-level policymakers have increasingly recognized that health is central to sustainable development.
Intervention for the prevention and control of osteoporosis should comprise a combination of legislative action, educational measures, health service activities, media coverage, and individual counselling to initiate changes in behaviour.
That the AIDS pandemic is threatening sustainable development in Africa only reinforces the reality that health is at the center of sustainable development.
The dual scourge of hunger and malnutrition will be truly vanquished not only when granaries are full, but also when people’s basic health needs are met and women are given their rightful role in societies.
An important lever for sustained action in tackling poverty and reducing hunger is money.
More than ever before, there is a global understanding that long-term social, economic, and environmental development would be impossible without healthy families, communities, and countries.