Almost two million deaths per year avoidable

These deaths can largely be prevented or at least delayed by effective health measures or by early detection and high -quality treatment. This is written by the Regional Office Europe of the World Health Organization (WHO).

According to this, every fifth man and every tenth woman in the region die before the age of 70 as a result of non-transferable diseases (NCDs), including cardiovascular and chronic respiratory diseases. 60 percent of the deaths can be traced to risk factors such as tobacco and alcohol consumption, high blood pressure, an unhealthy diet, obesity or lack of exercise. All this can be tackled as a society with a better health policy, warns the WHO Europe.

Diseases are “largely ignored”
“Non-transferable diseases are not only avoidable or treatable are also largely ignored,” criticizes the regional regional director Hans Kluge. If such diseases were a virus, the world would have been in the Lockdown for a long time.

Better prevention or treatment not only avoids almost two million deaths, but also saves billions of dollars, Kluge emphasizes. His organization spoke about annual loss of productivity of more than $ 514 billion (slightly less than EUR 440 billion). Nevertheless, it is far from sufficient investments in the provision.

Large differences between the countries
The WHO belongs to 53 countries to the region of Europe, including the 27 EU members, but also east of the East such as Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and Central -Asia. The differences between the countries have fallen since 2010, but remained great, says the report. This shows that the mortality of diseases in rich states such as Germany, Austria and Switzerland is lower than average, sometimes much higher.