European alcohol, smoking and obesity rates are ‘alarming’ says WHO

The United States is often branded the fattest country in the world (technically true depending on which statistics are used), however Europe is doing its best to take over this unwanted mantle from America, with “alarming” rates of drinking, eating and smoking found throughout Europe in a new report conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO).

In the United States, a staggering 78 million people, or 33% of the adult population, are classified as obese, whilst 74.1% of the people aged 15 and over are either overweight or obese (i.e. with a body mass index (BMI) of 25 or above).

However, health officials have now stressed that Europe has the world’s highest rates of drinking and smoking, with more than half of people now fat, which could ultimately lead to a whole number of serious health problems such as asthma, cancer, heart disease, osteoarthritis and stroke.

In what is the first study of its kind for three years, the European Health Report 2015 looked at 39 countries including European Union member states, in addition to former Soviet republics, to see if the WHO’s ‘Health 2020’ targets are being met.

It was discovered that the average life expectancy for men and women can drastically vary, ranging from 71 years of age in Belarus, Moldova and Russia, to 82 in France, Italy and Spain, according to figures from 2011. Overall, life expectancy for Europeans has risen from an average of 73.2 years back in 1990, to 76.8 years by 2011.

“There is a very real risk that these gains will be lost if smoking and alcohol consumption continue at the current rate. This is especially relevant to young people, who may not live as long as their grandparents”, said Zsuzsanna Jakab, WHO’s regional director, speaking to the Guardian.

WHO noted that many European countries seemed to have lower risk factors for premature death, the rates of obesity, tobacco use and alcohol consumption “remain alarmingly high”. The United Nations health agency calculated that in the previous four years, a growing number of Europeans are now classed as either overweight or obese, with 58.6% of Europeans overweight, and 23% suffering from obesity.

The report states that obesity is “one of the greatest public health challenges of the 21st century”, which “drastically increases a person’s risk of developing several [diseases], including cardiovascular diseases, cancer and diabetes mellitus”.

There is also a great deal of concern about Europe’s drinking and smoking habits. Although between 2005 and 2010, total alcohol consumption lowered by 10% in Europe, the continent still has the highest drinking rates across the globe.

Europe has the world’s highest prevalence of alcohol dependence (4%) according to the report, as well as the highest prevalence of alcohol-use disorders (7%). It is estimated that an average of 11 litres of pure alcohol are consumed per person every year, whilst around 30% of Europe uses tobacco.
“Europeans live long lives and healthy lives. We are the longest living region in the world,” said Claudia Stein, a senior WHO director for Europe.

She continued: “The differences in health status between European countries are inexplicably wide.
“If rates of smoking and alcohol consumption and obesity do not decline we may risk the gains in life expectancy we have seen — which may mean that the next generation may lead shorter lives than that we do.”

Stein warned that this could have the most serious impact on younger people, since their lives may be shortened unless action is taken to bring down consumption levels of tobacco, alcohol and calories.

Ireland to join Australia in having plain cigarette packets

‘Ban tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship’ is the theme of this year’s World No Tobacco Day according to the World Health Organization (WHO) – a specialised United Nations agency responsible for monitoring public health and also the pioneers of other world health awareness days such as World AIDS Day and Blood Donor Day.

Therefore, ahead of tomorrow’s World No Tobacco Day, Ireland Health Minister James Reilly has announced plans for the Republic of Ireland to follow Australia’s lead and become only the second country to adopt plain-packaging for cigarettes.

Australia became the world’s first country to implement this innovative anti-smoking agenda back in December 2012. The legislation forced all tobacco company logos to be banned from packages and instead replaced by bland, dreary green/brown-coloured packaging with unpleasant warning text and an accompanying image designed to shock smokers into quitting smoking.

Dr Reilly spoke on Tuesday saying there had been government approval for the go-ahead to abolish what he describes as a ‘mobile advertisement’ for tobacco companies who he says use intelligent marketing, with packet sizes, colour and style aimed at luring in younger smokers, particularly girls.

“The introduction of standardised packaging will remove the final way for tobacco companies to promote their deadly product in Ireland. Cigarette packets will no longer be a mobile advertisement for the tobacco industry”, he commented.

For Dr Reilly, the issue of smoking and what tragic health impacts it can have is a subject close to home. The Health Minister revealed he had witnessed first-hand the effects of tobacco after his brother died of lung cancer and his father lost his sight following a stroke. Both were smokers.

Dr Reilly also says that 5,200 people die in Ireland each year from tobacco-related diseases. He said: “One in two of all smokers will die from their addiction. I lost a brother who was a doctor, who understood fully what the cigarettes did, who was so addicted he couldn’t give them up. And my father was prematurely blind because of a stroke and spent the last 14 years of his life without being able to see.”

The decision to press ahead with plain packaging was agreed by a massive majority of the Cabinet on Tuesday and the aim is to make the products look less appealing and health warnings more obvious and alarming to smokers.

Minister Reilly says he is fully aware that tobacco companies will try every trick in the book in an attempt to thwart a plan that could potentially lose them a lot of money.

Unfortunately, not everyone thinks the idea of plain packaging is a good move and some believe it will have little effect on its apparent purpose – to reduce smoking rates.

The National Federation of Retail Newsagents Ireland President Joe Sweeney says the only groups who will benefit from the Minister’s announcement will be smugglers and criminals.

Mr Sweeney warned: “I support the government in its efforts to curtail the use of tobacco and alcohol. In doing this though, it must seek to find a balance between regulating harmful but legal, taxed behaviour and driving consumers into the black market to buy illicit products from criminals and subversives whose activities pose an even greater threat to society. The Minister for Health is sticking his head in the sand on policies towards the tobacco black market in Ireland which are putting retailers out of business. At a time when at least one in four cigarettes smoked in Ireland is illegal, the Minister’s failure to address the growing criminal fuelled trade in tobacco products shows a breath-taking lack of joined-up thinking.”

However, Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, Faculty of Public Health Medicine spokesman Dr Fenton Howell welcomed the news, saying: “Plain packaging will stop the tobacco industry from using the pack as a marketing tool to mislead another generation of young people into thinking that smoking is cool and fashionable, when in reality cigarettes makes addicts of our children and condemns them to a life of unnecessary illness and death 10-15 years ahead of time.”

UK health officials diagnose potentially fatal SARS-like virus

A 49-year-old Qatari male is currently being treated at a London-based hospital after contracting a new respiratory virus that is quite similar to that which claimed the lives of roughly 800 people back in 2003.

The man was transferred to the London hospital via air ambulance and was subsequently tested by health experts, who confirmed that the patient had a ‘SARS-like’ coronavirus.

Coronaviruses are mainly known to infect the upper respiratory and gastrointestinal tract of mammals and birds, but they are thought to be responsible for the majority of common colds within humans and there are currently around five different strains that can infect humans.

The SARS coronavirus (severe acute respiratory syndrome), made headlines in 2002 after first coming to prominence in Hong Kong and ended up spreading to 30 other countries before the condition was finally contained in 2003. It was spread through sneezing and coughing with initial symptoms including muscular pain, headache and fever. After 2 to 10 days respiratory problems begin to develop such as coughing, dyspnoea, and pneumonia. Of the people who contracted SARS during the 2002/2003 outbreak, 9% succumbed to it, with mortality rates especially high in those over 50-years of age.

The patient with the latest case of a SARS-like virus was first admitted to an intensive care unit in Doha, Qatar, on September 7 after complaining of symptoms four days previously. Then on September 11 the patient was transferred to the UK to receive more treatment.

This is the second recent confirmed case of a serious coronavirus as earlier in the year a 60-year-old Saudi national died as a result of his respiratory problems and The Health Protection Agency (HPA) say the two cases are identical. The HPA made the discovery after analysing gene sequences of the virus from the Qatari patient with samples of virus sequenced by Dutch scientists from lung tissue of the Saudi male who died.

Peter Openshaw, director of the Centre for Respiratory Infection at Imperial College London, wanted to alleviate any mass panic and stressed that the novel virus should not prove to be a major concern at this time and may have simply been found because of more intelligent testing methods. He commented, “For now, I would be watchful but not immediately concerned.”

Professor John Watson, head of the respiratory diseases department at the HPA, added, “The HPA is providing advice to healthcare workers to ensure the patient under investigation is being treated appropriately. In the light of the severity of the illness that has been identified in the two confirmed cases, immediate steps have been taken to ensure that people who have been in contact with the UK case have not been infected, and there is no evidence to suggest that they have. As we are aware of only two cases worldwide and there is no specific evidence of on-going transmission, at present there is no specific advice for the public or returning travellers to take but we will share any further advice with the public as soon as more information becomes available.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) have so far yet to state any travel restrictions after the discovery of the illness, with a spokesman from WHO saying, “WHO is currently in the process of obtaining further information to determine the public health implications of these two confirmed cases.”

Over a quarter of a million deaths can be averted by contraception

A new study has claimed that the use of effective contraceptive methods could prevent approximately 272,000 maternal deaths from childbirth or dangerous abortions every year. Researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health used a counterfactual modelling approach to imitate the World Health Organization’s (WHO) maternal mortality estimation method. They then calculated the total maternal deaths that were avoided by contraceptive use across 172 different countries.

The researchers extracted data from the WHO’s database for maternal mortality estimation, survey data for contraceptive use and information on births within females aged between 15 to 49 years of age. They also analysed general fertility rates from the United Nations 2010 World Population Prospects database.

After the mammoth task of studying all of the information, the study authors claim that worldwide use of contraception manages to prevent 272,000 maternal deaths each year. This equates to roughly 38 deaths for every 100,000 women who are using effective contraception, such as Dianette. The estimate is equivalent to a 44% global decline in maternal deaths.

The study has been published as part of a series of articles that are focusing on family planning by The Lancet, who produces medical journals and speciality journals in Oncology, Neurology and Infectious Diseases.

In the report, the researchers comment, “If all women in developing countries who want to avoid pregnancy use an effective contraceptive method, the number of maternal deaths would fall by a further 30%. Increasing contraceptive use in developing countries has cut the number of maternal deaths by 40% over the past 20 years. In developing countries, the risk of prematurity and low birth weight doubles when conception occurs within six months of a previous birth, and children born within two years of an elder sibling are 60% more likely to die in infancy than are those born more than two years after their sibling.”

Around 355,000 women died in 2008 while giving birth or from illegal or dangerous abortion, according to the study. Other statistics show that during 1995 and 2000 there were an estimated 338 million pregnancies worldwide that were unplanned or unwanted (28% of the total 1.2 billion pregnancies in this timeframe). These pregnancies culminated in close to 700,000 maternal deaths (around one-fifth of maternal deaths during that period).

With so many unplanned pregnancies and tragic unnecessary fatalities each year, it is inexplicable that an alarming number of men and women around the world still act careless in regards to using contraception. There are a wide variety of weird and wonderful Durex and Skins condoms that are available for men to try, and they are not expensive to buy. Not only do they prevent any unwanted pregnancies, condoms can also drastically reduce the risk of catching sexually transmitted infections such as chlamydia, herpes and gonorrhoea, which seem to be on the rise. In addition there are oral contraceptives for women such as Dianette, which is obtainable from Medical Specialists Pharmacy and works out from as little as just £9.99 per month.

The obesity crisis may be curbed by a vaccine

The obesity epidemic currently rifer in the developed countries could be helped by a new revolutionary obesity vaccine that some have already nicknamed the ‘flab jab’.  The private American company Braasch Biotech who specialise in both animal and human vaccines, conducted studies with obese mice who were purposely put on a high fat diet, and the results were promising.

The two vaccines in development are named JH17 and JH18, and both are somatostatins. The aforementioned is a peptide hormone that suppresses the release of growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1), which in turn increases a person’s metabolic rate, leading to weight loss. The vaccine makes the immune system believe that somatostatin is a ‘threat’ so the body can produce antibodies to neutralise the peptide.

For the experiments, Lead researcher Dr Keith Haffer and his colleagues studied twenty mice. Ten of these were obese mice who were given the vaccinations and the other half were the control group and these simply received saline injections. The obese mice were shown to lose 10% of their bodily weight a mere four days after first being given a jab and these results were shown in both versions of the vaccine.  The weight loss did not occur within the control group.

The results clearly excite Dr Haffer and he commented on the findings, “This study demonstrates the possibility of treating obesity with a vaccination. Although further studies are necessary to discover the long term implications of these vaccines, treatment of human obesity with vaccination could provide physicians with a drug and surgical-free option against the weight epidemic.”

The obese mice in the study were injected with quite large quantities of the vaccine. Other research that focused on pigs has yet to be published and this study indicates that lower doses may also be effective for weight loss.

Now the next step that will prove just how capable the vaccines are would be human trials. The vaccines cannot arrive quickly enough though with an estimated 30,000 Brits perishing each year from various complications connected to obesity. The problem drains the NHS of approximately £500 million annually and some are predicting that nearly half of British males will be obese within the next 20 years.

In 2007 the World Health Organization (WHO) released a graph that would seem to suggest that the obesity crisis is primarily rife in English speaking nations around the globe as six of the top seven fattest nations are English speaking.  The prevalence of overweight people in the Anglosphere in shown in the WHO graph:




The vaccines may be a long way off though as no human trials have actually happened yet. In the meantime if you are overweight and need to lose weight, you could try the old-fashioned simple but effective methods of weight loss such as sticking to a healthy diet high in fruit and veg,  increasing your exercise, or join a dedicated weight loss group where you can meet likeminded people and have the motivation to succeed together.