Tag: WHO

UN agency calls for all countries to rid foods of trans fat

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

The World Health Organization is calling on all nations to rid foods of artificial trans fats in the next five years.

The United Nations agency has in the past pushed to exterminate infectious diseases, but now it’s aiming to erase a hazard linked to chronic illness.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was expected to issue the call to action at a news conference in Geneva on Monday.

Officials think it can be done in five years because the work is well underway in many countries. Denmark did it 15 years ago, and since then the United States and more than 40 other higher-income countries have been working on getting the heart-clogging additives out of their food supplies.

The WHO is pushing middle- and lower-income countries to pick up the fight, said Dr Francesco Branca, director of the WHO’s Department of Nutrition for Health and Development.

Artificial trans fats are unhealthy substances that are created when hydrogen is added to vegetable oil to make it solid, like in the creation of margarine or shortening. Health experts say they can be replaced with canola oil or other products.

There are also naturally occurring trans fats in some meats and dairy products. The WHO recommends that no more than 1 percent of a person’s calories come from trans fats.

“Trans fats are a harmful compound that can be removed easily without major cost and without any impact on the quality of the foods,” Branca said.

Countries will likely have to use regulation or legislation to get food makers to make the switch, experts said.

Dr Tom Frieden, a former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who worked with WHO officials on the call to action, called its move unprecedented.

“The world is now setting its sights on today’s leading killers – particularly heart disease, which kills more people than any other cause in almost every country,” said Frieden, who is president of a New-York-based philanthropy-funded project called Resolve to Save Lives.

The first trans fatty food to hit the US market was Crisco shortening, which went on sale in 1911. Trans fatty foods became increasingly popular beginning in the 1950s, partly because experts at the time thought they were healthier than cooking with butter or lard.

Food makers liked artificial trans fats because they prolong product shelf life and enhance flflavourThey used them in such fare as doughnuts, cookies and deep-fried foods.

But studies gradually revealed that trans fats wreck cholesterol levels in the blood and drive up the risk of heart disease. Health advocates say trans fats are the most harmful fat in the food supply, and say they play a big role in more than 500,000 deaths around the world each year.

In the US, New York City in 2006 banned restaurants from serving food with trans fats. The same year the FDA required manufacturers to list trans fat content information on food labels.

Many manufacturers cut back, and studies showed trans fat levels in the blood of middle-aged US adults fell by nearly 60 percent by the end of the decade.

In 2015, the FDA took steps to finish the job of eliminating trans fats, calling for manufacturers to stop selling trans fatty foods by June 18, 2018 – a deadline that arrives next month. FDA officials have not said how much progress has been made or how they will enforce their rule against food makers that don’t comply.

“The removal of trans fats from the food supply as an additive counts as one of the major public health victories of the last decade,” said Laura MacCleery, policy director for the Washington, DC-based advocacy group, Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

World Health Organisation prepares for worst case Ebola scenario, hopes to deploy vaccine

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

The World Health Organization is preparing for the worst case scenario in an Ebola outbreak in a remote area of Congo, including spread to a major town, WHO Deputy Director-General of Emergency Preparedness and Response Peter Salama said on Friday.

He told a regular U.N. briefing in Geneva that he hoped the Democratic Republic of Congo would give the green light within days for the deployment of an experimental vaccine, but warned that the drug was complicated to use and was not a magic bullet.

He said the WHO had alerted the nine neighbouring countries but currently regarded the risk of regional spread as “moderate”.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

14 of the world’s 15 most polluted cities are in India, says WHO

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

India should follow China’s example and clean up the air in its cities, which are among the world’s worst for outdoor pollution, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

The WHO’s database of more than 4,300 cities showed Indian cities such as New Delhi, Varanasi and Patna were among the most polluted, based on the amount of particulate matter under 2.5 micrograms found in every cubic metre of air. The database actually reveals that India has 14 out of the 15 most polluted cities in the world in terms of PM 2.5 concentrations. Kanpur is the worst and Mumbai is the fourth most polluted city.

Chinese cities such as Xingtai and Shijiazhuang and the Saudi refining hub at Jubail were also highly polluted, but the data for those places was 4-5 years old, and Maria Neira, WHO’s head of public health, said China had made big improvements that India should follow.

“There is a big step at the government level (in China) declaring war on air pollution,” Neira said. “One of the reasons for that is that the health argument was very strongly presented, and the fact that the citizens were really breathing air that was totally unacceptable.”

“We would be very happy if we would see a similar movement now in India which is one of the countries for which we are particularly concerned, although there are good initiatives which can be put in place quickly, still the levels are very high and we would like to see a similar decision and leadership.”

The WHO says nine out of 10 people on the planet breathe polluted air, and it kills 7 million people each year, almost all of them in poor countries in Asia and Africa. About a quarter of deaths from heart disease, stroke and lung cancer can be attributed to air pollution, the WHO says.

Globally, outdoor air pollution has remained high and largely unchanged in the past six years, while household air pollution has got worse in many poorer countries, as people continue to cook with solid fuel or kerosene, instead of cleaner fuels such as gas and electricity.

“The transition to clean fuels and technology in the home, clean household energy, is too slow. It’s been three decades and we still have three billion people primarily relying on (polluting) fuels and technologies, and that’s for cooking alone,” said WHO technical officer Heather Adair-Rohani.

WHO’s global assessment is based on satellite data and modelling overlaid on the database of cities, which is self-selecting because it is based on voluntary reporting, with numbers that have been hugely revised since the previous report.

The most polluted city in 2016’s report, Zabol in Iran, has had its pollution level cut fourfold in the latest version of the database, and now appears to be cleaner than Australia’s capital Canberra.

“The data we are presenting today is I think the most accurate you can expect at the moment,” Neira said.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow