Chronic Disease Alliance: A unified approach

In June 2010, ESMO, as a member of the ‘European’ Chronic Disease Alliance, presented a policy paper to John Dalli, the EU Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy setting out their strategy for tackling chronic diseases.

The Chronic Disease Alliance, represents:

• European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL)
• European CanCer Organisation (ECCO)
• European Heart Network (EHN)
• European Kidney Health Alliance (EKHA)
• European Respiratory Society (ERS)
• European Society of Cardiology (ESC)
• European Society of Hypertension (ESH)
• European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)
• Federation of European Nurses in Diabetes (FEND)
• International Diabetes Federation – European Region (IDF Europe)

According to WHO statistics, chronic non-communicable diseases, including cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, diabetes, kidney disease, cancers, respiratory and liver diseases, account for 86% of deaths in the WHO European Region. Furthermore, up to 40% of the EU population aged over 15 reports having a long standing health problem and two out of three people who have reached retirement age have at least two chronic conditions.

The joint policy paper, entitled, ‘A Unified Prevention Approach’ stresses that while the individual human costs cannot be overstated, chronic disease also places an unsustainable financial burden on health care budgets. Through this paper, medical professionals across Europe make a case for the urgent need for political action to reduce the social and economic burden of chronic disease through prevention.

The Alliance is campaigning for the introduction of innovative measures, which are summarized below, addressing tobacco, poor diet, alcohol and lack of physical activity to prevent chronic diseases and protect the future health of the European population.

• Tobacco: Ensure that taxation on tobacco is harmonised at high levels across Europe; adopt standardised packaging for cigarettes with 80% of the package being devoted to pictorial health warnings; ban internet sales of tobacco and cigarette vending machines.
• Nutrition: Make efforts to reduce the fat, sugar and salt content a key priority; ban the addition of industrially produced trans fats to foods; introduce a mandatory traffic light colour coding system (using red, orange and green labels to show whether products contain high, medium or low levels of harmful nutrients) to facilitate consumer education; increase supply and access to affordable fresh fruit and vegetables, and EU measures to prohibit the marketing of unhealthy food to children.
• Physical activity: Set urban planning standards to prioritise non motorised transport and for recreational areas encouraging physical activity, give children access to periods of physical activity each day at school, and improve facilities for physical activity in school.
• Alcohol consumption: Create educational programmes to reinforce awareness of problems created by excessive alcohol consumption to ensure EU populations are better informed and investment in the development and implementation of alcohol dependence programmes. In addition, ban alcohol advertising, promotion and sponsorship of events via TV radio and sports programmes and ensure the introduction of uniform minimum EU taxes.

ESMO representatives in this initiative are David Kerr, ESMO President, Paolo Casali, Member of the ESMO Executive Committee, and Hans-Jörg Senn, Chair of the ESMO Cancer Prevention Working Group.

To read the full position paper, please click here