By Martin Banks - 13th July 2010
This year billions will be spent on the treatment of avoidable chronic diseaseInvestment in healthy lifestyles is the only sustainable way forward
Lars Ryden
The EU has been urged to do more to help reduce "unnecessary" loss of life to chronic diseases.
The demand, by an alliance of healthcare organisations, comes as new data shows the scale of the problem.
The heatlh professionals claim that chronic non-communicable diseases, including cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, diabetes, kidney disease, cancers, respiratory and liver diseases, account for 86 per cent of deaths in Europe.
The Chronic diseases alliance says up to 40 per cent of the EU population aged over 15 reports having a long standing health problem and two out of three people who have reached retirement age have at least two chronic conditions.
The alliance has now launched a campaign seeking the introduction of "innovative measures" addressing tobacco, poor diet, alcohol and lack of physical activity.
The EU, it says, should ensure that taxation on tobacco is "harmonised at high levels across Europe" and adopt standardised packaging for cigarettes with 80 per cent of the package being devoted to pictorial health warnings.
Internet sales of tobacco and cigarette from vending machines should also be banned, says the alliance.
A spokesman for the alliance, Professor Lars Ryden, said such measures are necessary to "protect the future health of the European population."
He added, "We firmly believe that investment in healthy lifestyles is the only sustainable way forward to prevent chronic disease.
“The diseases represented in the alliance have striking commonalities and interactions, underling the fact that there are common areas to chronic diseases which can be addressed by the same policy measures.”
“This year billions will be spent on the treatment of avoidable chronic disease in Europe, and millions of lives will be unnecessarily lost or impaired.
"If radical action is not taken now, this costly burden will continue to increase,” added Ryden, from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.
The alliance represents some of the leading European organisations in the fields of health promotion, disease prevention and health care.
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