Global health policy
The World Health Organisation (WHO)
The WHO has produced global strategies for physical activity and nutrition and tobacco control.
- The WHO agreed the Framework Convention for Tobacco Control on 21 May 2003.
- The WHO approved a global strategy for diet, physical activity and health at the World Health Assembly in 2004. The strategy is not mandatory it recommends a series of national actions for WHO member states. Details are available at http://www.who.int/
- The WHO has launched a global call for action on chronic disease prevention (2005) in particular in developing economies. In this report the WHO proposes a new global (millennium development) goal to reduce the projected trends of chronic disease by 2 % each year until 2015.
The WHO has also produced a series of guides on developing an information base on chronic disease and its determinants. These include an atlas of heart disease and stroke, which the WHO produced with the US Centres for Disease Control, and the WHO CVD risk management package for low and medium resource settings. Both publications are available from http://www.who.int/cardiovascular_diseases/en/
The WHO has also supported major international epidemiological studies on chronic diseases and their risk factors. These include the Monica and the Interheart studies available at: www.who.int/ncd/cvd/index.htm
The WHO will organise a ministerial conference in 2006 in Turkey on Obesity.
National Heart Forum (NHF) international policy goals for prevention
- Every child born into the new millennium should be able to live free of avoidable cardiovascular disease until at least the age of 65
- Cardiovascular disease prevention must have a high priority for EU public health policy.
The European Food Authority should have a clear remit in nutritional issues and wider public health, beyond food safety
- Nutrition claims in food labelling should be subject to effective European regulation.
- European-wide food labelling regulations should ensure that there is easy to read meaningful and consumer friendly information on the nutritional content of all processed food sold in Europe.
- The European Union should regulate to protect children from the marketing of foods high in fat, sugar and salt.
- The European Union should reform the Common Agricultural Policy to promote and protect human health
- Tough, effective, Europe-wide regulations to end direct and indirect marketing of tobacco must be introduced with minimum delay to prevent tobacco companies recruiting another generation of smokers.
- The European Union should prevent smuggling of tobacco into and within Europe and the avoidance of tobacco taxes.