Lancet Urges Cut in Chronic Disease Deaths

The Oxford, England-based journal The Lancet says 36 million lives could be saved worldwide by 2015 if chronic disease deaths were cut by 2 percent a year.

A World Health Organization series of papers published Wednesday in the medical journal calls for the 2 percent annual decrease in such chronic diseases as heart disease, stroke and cancer to be a global goal.

In a comment accompanying the series, Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, says that goal should be added to the eight existing Millennium Development Goals that currently lack any commitment to reducing chronic diseases.

Wrote Horton: “While the political fashions have embraced some diseases — HIV-AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis, in particular — many other common conditions remain marginal to the mainstream of global action on health. Chronic diseases are among these neglected conditions

Without concerted and coordinated political action, he added, the gains achieved in reducing the burden of infectious disease will be washed away as a new wave of preventable illness engulfs those least able to protect themselves.