Expensive Health Care Doesn't Equal Good Health by Sharon L. Wallenberg

 

US has most expensive health care in the world and, according to UN statistics, some of the least healthy people in the world.  Why?  Meat and dairy!  Cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, & more, can be prevented, often reversed, with plant-based diet.  Eating fruits, vegetables is more healthful & affordable than meat and dairy which causes these diseases.

The meat and dairy based diet causes catastrophic health concerns - such as skyrocketing diabetes, cancer, heart disease, potentially devastating antibiotic resistance, along with accompanying rising health care costs. 

 

A plant-based diet is the best for optimal health – human, animal, and planet.  It has been proven to prevent and reverse heart disease, prevent and treat cancer, and prevent and reverse diabetes, the three largest causes of mortality and morbidity in both men and women. 

 

In addition, it is globally sustainable.  The meat and dairy based diet is not sustainable because of the vast amounts of water, grain, and land needed, and the pollution produced.  Methane from animals raised for food traps heat in the atmosphere much more effectively than carbon dioxide, making it the single largest cause of global warming. 

 

Political Subsidies on Meat and Dairy are Deadly! By Sharon Leontine Wallenberg

Last year, 149 million children had stunted growth due to poor diets.  Almost half of the children under 5 years of age that die, have undernutrition as cause of death.  One third of all people around the world are affected by malnutrition. Over 40% of all men and women, approximately 2.2 billion people, are currently overweight or obese.

The unhealthy, government subsidized, fat, cholesterol, hormone, antibiotic, and disease ladened meat and dairy based diet causes at least 8 million deaths per year.  In the next decade, one in two people will be malnourished, and an estimated 40 million children will suffer from obesity or overweight.

Eliminating government subsidies on meat and dairy in the high-income nations will substantially improve human health and save lives worldwide.  Politically induced subsidies promote deadly disease by making unhealthy food choice artificially affordable.  Worldwide, they force low- income nations into poverty and starvation by keeping world produce prices artificially skewed.

We all need to rethink our relationship to each other – of all incomes and species – to our shared scarce resources, to the treatment of flora and vegetation, to the planet, and everything on it.  We need to eat plants, not animals.

 

Low and Middle Income Countries Benefit from Generosity of USA Research by Sharon L. Wallenberg

United Nations World Health Organization and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in the USA, founded by Danny Thomas to advance research and treatment of childhood cancer, created a platform to dramatically increase access to childhood cancer medicine.  The Global Platform for Access to Childhood Cancer Medicines will provide an uninterrupted supply of quality-assured childhood cancer medicines to low- and middle-income countries. 

 “Close to nine in ten children with cancer live in low-and middle-income countries,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “Survival in these countries is less than 30%, compared with 80% in high-income countries. This new platform…will help redress this unacceptable imbalance and give hope to many thousands of parents faced with the devastating reality of a child with cancer.”

 Each year, an estimated 400 000 children worldwide develop cancer. The majority of children living in low-and middle-income countries are unable to consistently obtain or afford cancer medicines. As a result, nearly 100 000 children die each year.  This initiative strives to end this inequity.

 

St. Jude is making a six-year, US$ 200 million investment to launch the platform, which will provide medicines at no cost to countries participating in the pilot phase. This is the largest financial commitment for a global effort in childhood cancer medicines to date.