Public Health Enemy No. 1: Ourselves

While infectious diseases like AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis should remain high on their hit lists, global health leaders are now having to focus more on altering lifestyles than containing outbreaks, the assistant U.S. health secretary said in Atlanta May 14. In 2010, more than two-thirds of the nearly 53 million deaths worldwide were caused by non-communicable diseases, those brought on by lifestyle or genetics rather than transmitted from one person to another. “Health for much of the planet’s population is rapidly looking like some of the health issues that we see here in the United States,” said Howard Koh, the No. 2 official in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. While food aid and vaccination campaigns have drastically cut down on malnutrition and child mortality, most countries now are suffering from too much food instead of too little, Dr. Koh said. In other words, “people are not starved, but stuffed,” he said...