what is considered the greatest risk to the health and well being
The world is facing multiple wellness challenges. These range from outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases similar measles and diphtheria, increasing reports of drug-resistant pathogens, growing rates of obesity and physical inactivity to the health impacts of environmental pollution and climatic change and multiple humanitarian crises.
To address these and other threats, 2019 sees the start of the Earth Health Organization's new 5-year strategic programme – the 13th General Programme of Work. This plan focuses on a triple billion target: ensuring i billion more than people do good from admission to universal health coverage, 1 billion more people are protected from wellness emergencies and i billion more people enjoy better wellness and well-being. Reaching this goal will require addressing the threats to health from a diversity of angles.
Hither are ten of the many issues that will demand attention from WHO and health partners in 2019.
Air pollution and climatic change
Nine out of x people breathe polluted air every day. In 2019, air pollution is considered by WHO as the greatest environmental risk to health. Microscopic pollutants in the air tin penetrate respiratory and circulatory systems, dissentious the lungs, heart and brain, killing 7 million people prematurely every year from diseases such as cancer, stroke, heart and lung illness. Effectually 90% of these deaths are in low- and middle-income countries, with loftier volumes of emissions from manufacture, transport and agronomics, as well as muddy cookstoves and fuels in homes.
The primary crusade of air pollution (burning fossil fuels) is likewise a major contributor to climate change, which impacts people's health in dissimilar ways. Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to crusade 250 000 additional deaths per year, from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and rut stress.
In Oct 2018, WHO held its kickoff ever Global Conference on Air Pollution and Health in Geneva. Countries and organizations made more than 70 commitments to better air quality. This year, the United Nations Climate Tiptop in September will aim to strengthen climate action and ambition worldwide. Even if all the commitments made past countries for the Paris Agreement are accomplished, the world is still on a course to warm past more than than 3°C this century.
Noncommunicable diseases
Noncommunicable diseases, such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease, are collectively responsible for over 70% of all deaths worldwide, or 41 million people. This includes 15 million people dying prematurely, aged between xxx and 69.
Over 85% of these premature deaths are in low- and middle-income countries. The ascent of these diseases has been driven past five major risk factors: tobacco use, physical inactivity, the harmful use of alcohol, unhealthy diets and air pollution. These run a risk factors also exacerbate mental health bug, that may originate from an early historic period: half of all mental affliction begins by the age of fourteen, only most cases get undetected and untreated – suicide is the 2nd leading cause of decease among 15-19 year-olds.
Amongst many things, this year WHO will piece of work with governments to assist them meet the global target of reducing concrete inactivity past xv% by 2030 – through such actions every bit implementing the ACTIVE policy toolkit to assistance become more people beingness agile every day.
Global flu pandemic
The world volition face some other influenza pandemic – the simply thing we don't know is when information technology will hitting and how severe it will be. Global defences are just as effective every bit the weakest link in any country'southward health emergency preparedness and response arrangement.
WHO is constantly monitoring the circulation of flu viruses to detect potential pandemic strains: 153 institutions in 114 countries are involved in global surveillance and response.
Every twelvemonth, WHO recommends which strains should be included in the flu vaccine to protect people from seasonal influenza. In the event that a new flu strain develops pandemic potential, WHO has set a unique partnership with all the major players to ensure effective and equitable access to diagnostics, vaccines and antivirals (treatments), especially in developing countries.
Delicate and vulnerable settings
More 1.6 billion people (22% of the global population) live in places where protracted crises (through a combination of challenges such as drought, dearth, conflict, and population displacement) and weak wellness services leave them without access to basic care.
Fragile settings exist in almost all regions of the world, and these are where half of the key targets in the sustainable development goals, including on child and maternal health, remains unmet.
WHO volition continue to work in these countries to strengthen health systems so that they are ameliorate prepared to detect and respond to outbreaks, besides every bit able to evangelize high quality health services, including immunization.
Antimicrobial resistance
The development of antibiotics, antivirals and antimalarials are some of modern medicine's greatest successes. At present, time with these drugs is running out. Antimicrobial resistance – the ability of bacteria, parasites, viruses and fungi to resist these medicines – threatens to send us back to a time when nosotros were unable to easily treat infections such as pneumonia, tuberculosis, gonorrhoea, and salmonellosis. The inability to foreclose infections could seriously compromise surgery and procedures such equally chemotherapy.
Resistance to tuberculosis drugs is a formidable obstruction to fighting a disease that causes around 10 meg people to autumn ill, and 1.6 one thousand thousand to die, every year. In 2017, around 600 000 cases of tuberculosis were resistant to rifampicin – the nigh effective first-line drug – and 82% of these people had multidrug-resistant tuberculosis.
Drug resistance is driven by the overuse of antimicrobials in people, just too in animals, especially those used for food production, too as in the surroundings. WHO is working with these sectors to implement a global action plan to tackle antimicrobial resistance by increasing sensation and knowledge, reducing infection, and encouraging prudent utilize of antimicrobials.
Ebola and other high-threat pathogens
In 2018, the Democratic Republic of the Congo saw two separate Ebola outbreaks, both of which spread to cities of more than 1 1000000 people. One of the afflicted provinces is also in an agile disharmonize zone.
This shows that the context in which an epidemic of a loftier-threat pathogen similar Ebola erupts is disquisitional – what happened in rural outbreaks in the past doesn't ever utilise to densely populated urban areas or disharmonize-affected areas.
At a conference on Preparedness for Public Health Emergencies held final December, participants from the public health, animate being wellness, transport and tourism sectors focussed on the growing challenges of tackling outbreaks and wellness emergencies in urban areas. They called for WHO and partners to designate 2019 as a "Year of action on preparedness for health emergencies".
WHO's R&D Blueprint identifies diseases and pathogens that accept potential to cause a public health emergency but lack effective treatments and vaccines. This watchlist for priority research and development includes Ebola, several other haemorrhagic fevers, Zika, Nipah, Middle Due east respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and affliction X, which represents the need to prepare for an unknown pathogen that could crusade a serious epidemic.
Weak master health care
Primary health intendance is unremarkably the get-go signal of contact people have with their health care system, and ideally should provide comprehensive, affordable, community-based care throughout life.
Primary health care can meet the majority of a person's health needs of the course of their life. Health systems with strong primary wellness care are needed to achieve universal health coverage.
Yet many countries do not accept adequate primary wellness care facilities. This neglect may exist a lack of resource in depression- or center-income countries, but possibly also a focus in the by few decades on single disease programmes. In Oct 2018, WHO co-hosted a major global conference in Astana, Republic of kazakhstan at which all countries committed to renew the commitment to primary health care made in the Alma-Ata declaration in 1978.
In 2019, WHO volition work with partners to revitalize and strengthen primary health intendance in countries, and follow up on specific commitments made by in the Astana Declaration.
Vaccine hesitancy
Vaccine hesitancy – the reluctance or refusal to vaccinate despite the availability of vaccines – threatens to opposite progress fabricated in tackling vaccine-preventable diseases. Vaccination is one of the near toll-effective ways of avoiding illness – information technology currently prevents ii-3 million deaths a year, and a further 1.five million could be avoided if global coverage of vaccinations improved.
Measles, for example, has seen a 30% increase in cases globally. The reasons for this rise are circuitous, and non all of these cases are due to vaccine hesitancy. Nonetheless, some countries that were close to eliminating the disease take seen a resurgence.
The reasons why people cull not to vaccinate are complex; a vaccines informational group to WHO identified complacency, inconvenience in accessing vaccines, and lack of confidence are key reasons underlying hesitancy. Wellness workers, especially those in communities, remain the most trusted advisor and influencer of vaccination decisions, and they must be supported to provide trusted, apparent information on vaccines.
In 2019, WHO will ramp up piece of work to eliminate cervical cancerworldwide by increasing coverage of the HPV vaccine, amongst other interventions. 2019 may also exist the year when transmission of wild poliovirus is stopped in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan and Islamic republic of pakistan. Final year, less than thirty cases were reported in both countries. WHO and partners are committed to supporting these countries to vaccinate every final kid to eradicate this crippling disease for good.
Dengue
Dengue, a mosquito-borne disease that causes flu-similar symptoms and can be lethal and impale upwardly to xx% of those with astringent dengue, has been a growing threat for decades.
A loftier number of cases occur in the rainy seasons of countries such as Bangladesh and India. Now, its season in these countries is lengthening significantly (in 2018, Bangladesh saw the highest number of deaths in nearly ii decades), and the disease is spreading to less tropical and more temperate countries such equally Nepal, that have not traditionally seen the disease.
An estimated 40% of the world is at risk of dengue fever, and at that place are around 390 one thousand thousand infections a year. WHO'southward Dengue control strategy aims to reduce deaths by fifty% by 2020.
HIV
The progress made against HIV has been enormous in terms of getting people tested, providing them with antiretrovirals (22 million are on treatment), and providing access to preventive measures such as a pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP, which is when people at gamble of HIV have antiretrovirals to prevent infection).
However, the epidemic continues to rage with nearly a million people every yr dying of HIV/AIDS. Since the beginning of the epidemic, more 70 meg people have acquired the infection, and about 35 meg people take died. Today, around 37 1000000 worldwide live with HIV. Reaching people like sex workers, people in prison house, men who have sex with men, or transgender people is hugely challenging. Often these groups are excluded from health services. A grouping increasingly affected by HIV are young girls and women (aged 15–24), who are specially at high risk and account for ane in 4 HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa despite being only 10% of the population.
This year, WHO volition work with countries to support the introduction of self-testing then that more than people living with HIV know their status and can receive treatment (or preventive measures in the case of a negative exam result). I activeness will exist to deed on new guidance announced In December 2018, by WHO and the International Labour System to support companies and organizations to offering HIV cocky-tests in the workplace.
Source: https://www.who.int/vietnam/news/feature-stories/detail/ten-threats-to-global-health-in-2019