DON’T BRING M THAT WESTERN P


by Françoise Briet A 4 iAM


ccording to the World Economic Forum’s 2010 Global Economic Development Report, “Non- communicable diseases (NCDs) pose a greater threat to global economic


development than fiscal crises, natural disasters, corruption or infectious disease.”1


Although the


pandemic of NCDs is well documented in the developed world, this is increasingly a public health issue faced by many developing countries.


In 2008, NCDs such as cancers, cardiovascular


diseases, and diabetes killed 36 million, representing 63% of people who died worldwide. Nearly 80% of all NCDs deaths - equivalent to 29 million people - occurred in low- and middle-income countries.2


The World Health


organization (WHO) estimates that by 2030, NCDs will be the cause of nearly five times as many deaths as the traditional infectious plague of poor nations such as tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/AIDS.3


This is


due among other things to longer lifespan as well as increased urbanization and fundamental changes in food


consumption patterns. As a result, it is estimated that the cumulative loss of output just in low and middle-income countries over the coming 15-year period for NCDs will be more than $7 trillion.4 Over the past 10 years, the global burden of disease


has shifted. For the first time in human history, there are more people living in cities than in rural areas, more people who are overweight than underweight, more deaths among adults than among children. And there are also more people dying from NCDs in poor countries than in rich countries.5 Multinational corporations are finding new ways of


selling processed food in the developing world. For big food and drink firms like Nestle, Unilever, SABMiller and Coca-Cola, the wealthy western markets have reached their saturation point and their current strategy is to open up new business opportunities among people living on $2 a day in low- and middle-income countries.6


Similar


to what happened with the tobacco industry, the world of the poor is now their channel for growth.6&7 To conquer this new market, they have increased the availability, affordability and acceptability of their food products for the poor, even in the most remote areas. For example, Nestlé is packaging smaller quantities of


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