Sustainable Agriculture and Food: Four volume set (Earthscan Reference Collections)

Diet and Health: Diseases and Food 275

through infectious and parasitic diseases are very low compared to developing
countries, while diet-related non-communicable diseases like coronary heart dis-
ease and cancers are high in both developed and developing worlds. Degenerative
disease rates are already high in the developing world. Figure 13.1 gives the leading
causes of mortality by age to give another view of the global disease patterns.
The WHO and the FAO reports stress that world health in general is in transi-
tion with non-communicable diseases now taking a higher toll than communicable

Table 13.2 Number of deaths by WHO regions, estimates for 2002 (thousands)

Africa Western

Pacific

Europe The

Americas

Eastern

Mediterranean

South-

East

Asia

Total

world-

wide

Infectious &

parasitic

diseases

5787 794 212 394 959 2968 11,114

Cardiovascular

diseases^113638174857192710803911 16,728

Cancers 410 2315 1822 1115 272 1160 7094

Respiratory

infectionsa^107151127322836513933841

Perinatal

and maternal

causes

585 371 69 192 371 1183 2771

Injuries 747 1231 803 540 391 1267 4979

Note: a This does NOT include respiratory diseases; includes upper and lower respiratory
infections and otitis media.
Source: WHO, Shaping the Future, World Health Report, Geneva, 2003, calculated from Annex
Table 2

Source: WHO, World Health Report 2003

Figure 13.1 Leading causes of mortality, by age, 2002