Health Care faces serious challenges from ‘big business’: UN
Helsinki, Finland, 11 June 2013: Efforts to promote good health are more vital than
ever as non-communicable diseases have overtaken infectious diseases as the leading
cause of death, a senior United Nations official said on Monday, while also warning
that they face daunting challenges, including from ‘big business’.
“Today,
the tables are turned. Instead of diseases vanishing as living conditions improve,
socio-economic progress is actually creating the conditions that favour the rise of
non-communicable diseases,” Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization
(WHO), said in her address to the 8th Global Conference on Health Promotion,
held in Helsinki, Finland. “Economic growth, modernization, and urbanization have
opened wide the entry point for the spread of unhealthy lifestyles,” she stated.
Dr.
Chan told participants that today, getting people to lead healthy lifestyles and adopt
healthy behaviours faces opposition from forces that are “not so friendly.” “Efforts
to prevent non-communicable diseases go against the business interests of powerful
economic operators. In my view, this is one of the biggest challenges facing health
promotion,” she stated.
“It is not just Big Tobacco anymore. Public health
must also contend with Big Food, Big Soda, and Big Alcohol. All of these industries
fear regulation, and protect themselves by using the same tactics.” She said these
tactics include front groups, lobbies, promises of self-regulation, lawsuits, and
industry-funded research that “confuses the evidence and keeps the public in doubt.”
“Let me remind you. Not one single country has managed to turn around its obesity
epidemic in all age groups. This is not a failure of individual will-power. This is
a failure of political will to take on big business.” Dr. Chan also voiced concern
about two recent and related trends. “The first relates to trade agreements. Governments
introducing measures to protect the health of their citizens are being taken to court,
and challenged in litigation. This is dangerous,” she stated. “The second is efforts
by industry to shape the public health policies and strategies that affect their products.
When industry is involved in policy-making, rest assured that the most effective control
measures will be downplayed or left out entirely. This, too, is well documented, and
dangerous.
“In the view of WHO, the formulation of health policies must be
protected from distortion by commercial or vested interests,” Dr. Chan stressed. The
week-long conference, co-hosted by WHO and Finland’s Ministry of Social Affairs and
Health, will assess achievements and aims for health promotion globally. It aims to
address what works and how, identifying options for action, available processes, mechanisms
and tools.Source: UN