Plan to improve diet and health habits to be on agenda of UN agency’s annual meeting

A strategy for dealing with major risk factors responsible for the growing worldwide burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as cancer and obesity will be on the agenda of the United Nations health agency’s annual meeting later this year.

The World Health Organization’s (WHO) Executive Board has accepted the agency’s Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health to be considered for adoption by the 2004 World Health Assembly, which meets in May.

The Strategy, which explains the global burden of NCDs and how healthier diet, nutrition and physical activity choices can help to prevent and control them, specifies roles for WHO, member States, UN agencies, the private sector and civil society in helping to reduce the occurrence of NCDs.

WHO member States requested the strategy at their 2002 meeting to address two of the major risk factors responsible for NCDs, which also include cardiovascular disease and Type-2 diabetes. Such illnesses now account for some 60 per cent of global deaths and almost half of the global burden of disease.

The strategy document was developed through a wide-ranging series of consultations, including formal meetings attended by representatives of more than 80 countries, other UN agencies, civil society and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the private sector.

The Executive Board, which is meeting in Geneva this week, agreed to allow member States until 29 February to make further comments on the draft document. The WHO secretariat will then prepare a final draft for the full membership to consider at the Assembly, which sets the agency’s policy direction.

Board members today agreed on the wording of the draft resolution that will accompany the strategy document, following requests by some delegates for amendments.

“The strategy requested by our member States gives them a strong instrument to do something about this growing public health problem,” said Dr. Catherine Le Galès-Camus, WHO Assistant-Director General for Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Health.

While warning that “changing diet and physical activity patterns will not be easy,” she said the strategy “could lead to one of the largest positive shifts in population health ever undertaken and should put populations on pathways to lifelong and sustained improvements in their health.”