The World Health Report 2002: Reducing Risks, Promoting Healthy LifeWorld Health Organization, 2002 - 248 pages The World Health Report 2002 measures the amount of disease, disability, and health in the world today that can be attributed to some of the most important risks to human health. Even more importantly, it also calculates how much of this present burden could be avoided in the next 10 years. The World Health Report 2002 represents one of the largest research projects ever undertaken by WHO, in collaboration with experts worldwide. Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, Director-General of WHO, describes this report as a wake up call to the global community. The report quantifies some of the most important risks to human health and examines a range of methods to reduce them. The ultimate goal is to help governments of all countries to lower major risks to health, and thereby raise the healthy life expectancy of their populations. The risk factors range from underweight, unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene to high blood pressure, raised cholesterol, and obesity. The report's findings give an intriguing - and alarming - insight into not just the current causes of disease and death and the factors underlying them, but also into human patterns of living and how some may be changing around the world while others remain dangerously unchanged. Dr Brundtland says: This report helps every country in the world to see what measures it can take to reduce risks and promote healthy life for its own population. |
From inside the book
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... benefits by focusing on those risks , and it can help set agendas for research and policy action . The broader activity of risk analysis is a political activity as well as a scientific one and embraces public perception of risk ...
... benefits and harms for health . Tobacco is either an established or a rapidly emerging risk to health in all developing countries : the need for more stringent tobacco control is uniformly recognized - including in- creased taxation ...
... benefits . Therefore this chapter strongly advocates the assessment of population - wide risks as well as high - risk individuals in strategies for risk reduction . The key challenge is to find the right balance between the two ...
... benefits of fruit and vegetable intake and physical activity by assessing people with low levels of these factors . The important role of protective factors in adolescent health is outlined in Box 2.2 . INCLUDING PROXIMAL AND DISTAL ...
... benefits to the community appears to offer little to each participating individual . This may adversely affect motivation of the population at large ( known as the " prevention paradox " ) . Although most often applied to cardiovascu ...