The number of avoidable deaths from lifestyle-related diseases such as diabetes climbed to 16 million in 2012, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Monday, calling on governments to reverse the trend.
The number has risen from 14.6 million people who died under the age of 70 from noncommunicable diseases in the year 2000, the UN health agency said in a report that presented the latest available global data.
'The global community has the chance to change the course of the noncommunicable disease epidemic,' WHO Director General Margaret Chan said in Geneva.
Her organization especially appealed to the governments of developing and emerging countries, where deaths from lifestyle diseases are overtaking those from infections.
WHO estimated that 82 per cent of the premature deaths from heart problems, cancer, smoking-related illnesses, diabetes and other lifestyle diseases occur in these countries.
At least one in four adults dies of such illnesses in Russia and the former Soviet Republics, as well as in the Asian countries of Afghanistan, Mongolia, India, North Korea, the Philippines and Papua New Guinea, the report showed.
Mali, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Guyana, as well as Trinidad and Tobago also fall in this bracket.
Chan urged governments to invest more in health awareness campaigns on the benefits of healthy diets and sports.
The health organization cited the example of Hungary, where sales of very sweet and salty foods fell by more than a quarter after a tax on such products was introduced in 2011.