The 2014 World Cancer Report, issued by WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, provoked considerable alarm. The number of new cancer cases has reached an all-time high and is projected to continue to rise. Developing countries now account for around 70% of all cancer deaths. Many of these people die without treatment, not even pain relief.
Estimates for 2010 indicate that cancer cost the world economy nearly $1.2 trillion. No country anywhere, no matter how rich, can treat its way out of the cancer crisis. A much greater commitment to prevention is needed.
The same is true for heart disease, diabetes, and chronic lung diseases. In some middle-income countries, diabetes treatment alone is now absorbing nearly half of the entire health budget.
Not only has the disease burden shifted since the start of this century. The poverty map has changed.
Today, around 70% of the world’s poor live in middle-income countries. As more and more countries graduate to middle-income status, they also graduate from eligibility for support from the Global Fund and GAVI, and for concessional prices for medicines.
We need to ask some questions.
Will economic growth be accompanied by a proportionate increase in domestic budgets for health? Will countries put polices in place to ensure that benefits are fairly shared? If not, the world will see a growing number of rich countries full of poor people.
http://www.who.int/dg/speeches/2014/wha-19052014/en/
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