Chronic diseases, mainly cardiovascular diseases, cancers, diabetes and chronic respiratory diseases have overtaken communicable diseases as the leading health burden in the Western Pacific Region. Up to 80% of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and over a third of cancers could be prevented by eliminating shared risk factors, mainly tobacco use, unhealthy diet, physical inactivity and the harmful use of alcohol.
WHO has proposed a global goal for the prevention and control of chronic noncommunicable diseases that calls for an additional 2% reduction in chronic disease death rates every year from 2005 to 2015. The goal focuses on an achievable level of prevention that may be targeted for individual countries depending on the current state of the epidemic. An additional 2% reduction in chronic disease deaths every year over the next 10 years would mean 36 million lives saved worldwide by 2015. Close to 10 million of these lives would be saved in the Western Pacific.
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