Disease Prevention

Disease prevention is essential in preserving lives, maintaining quality of life, and mitigating the enormous financial burden associated with unhealthy populations. Around the world, the leading causes of death are largely preventable by making alterations in lifestyles and practicing basic safety measures that prevent the spread of infectious diseases and help to forestall accidents. In developed countries, the leading causes of death are ischemic heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lower respiratory infections, trachea, bronchus, and lung cancers, vehicular accidents, stomach cancer, hypertensive heart disease, tuberculosis, and suicide. While the developing world shares some of the affects of lifestyle-related diseases, they also have unique vulnerabilities to diseases that are generally under control in the developed world. The leading causes of death in developing countries are HIV/AIDS, lower respiratory infections, ischemic heart disease, diarrheal disease, cerebrovascular disease, childhood diseases, malaria, tuberculosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and measles.

At the global level, the major steps in disease prevention include combating poverty, increasing surveillance of disease outbreaks, providing assistance to countries that report health problems, restricting transport of people and goods out of infected areas, developing tests that provide early detection capabilities, and making vaccines and antiviral drugs available wherever needed. At the national level, all countries need well-established infrastructures that guarantee access to healthcare, ensure safe drinking water and improved sanitation, and monitor public health. Both national governments and international organizations need to take greater responsibility for promoting preventive care at the individual level through information dissemination and programs designed to encourage populations to practice preventive measures that include avoiding tobacco and excessive alcohol consumption, obtaining prenatal and postnatal care, maintaining healthy weight levels, eating more fruits and vegetables and less fat, salt, and sugar, being physically active, immunizing children against preventable diseases, washing food, hands, and utensils to avoid food contamination, practicing birth control and safe sex, controlling chronic diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure, practicing home and vehicular safety, and maintaining good mental health.

In the poorest countries of the world, disease prevention and treatment require concentrated efforts by international organizations such as the United Nations, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) as well as by national and private organizations. The United Nations Millennium Goals recognize that the key to disease prevention is fighting poverty. Specific goals include reducing child mortality by two-thirds, cutting maternal mortality by three-fourths, and reversing current trends in infectious diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria awards grants for programs designed to prevent and treat these diseases while requiring accountability and success in meeting target goals. The United States government has earmarked funding for disease prevention and treatment through the Millennium Challenge Account and the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. In June 2007, at the annual summit of the Group of Eight (G-8) industrialized nations, delegates [Page 540]pledged $60 billion a year earmarked for prevention and treatment programs for HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis in Africa and for strengthening health systems in the least developed countries.

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