Because we are on average living much longer lives than did many of our forebears, the quality of those lives is sometimes marred by the unwelcome presence of disease.
Increasingly people live with some type of severe disability. The following synopses are newspaper extracts from a recent report by the World Health Organization (WHO).
"A global epidemic of cancers and other chronic diseases was forecast yesterday by WHO. The rate of smoking induced-lung cancer among women is expected to rise by a third over the next eight years. Prostate cancer among men is set to increase by 40 per cent . . . Heart disease and strokes are the biggest killers, with 15 million victims a year. The rate is worst in Britain and other industrialised countries and is becoming more common in poorer countries. Diabetes will double by 2025 and dementia will become more widespread.
"Cancers, which kill 6.3 million people a year, are expected to double in the next 25 years. Lung cancer is the leading killer, claiming one million lives a year."
Further: "About 1.5 million died of AIDS worldwide in 1996. Tuberculosis killed 3 million. Diarrheal diseases claimed 2.5 million. Malaria killed between 1.5 and 2.7 million people." This is not utopia! (Sources: Knight-Ridder News Service, The Express [London], World Health Organization.)
