Evolutionary medicine uses our ancestral history to explain disease prevalence and inform care for conditions like Type 2 diabetes. It also challenges the bio-ethnocentrism of western medicine.
While the pandemic has focused the world’s attention on how to prevent infectious disease, many of the lessons learned from COVID-19 prevention can also be applied to chronic disease prevention.
Kenneth McLeod, Binghamton University, State University of New York
Going back to work at an office? An expert explains how the relatively cool temperature many offices are kept at may affect your body – and your health.
Governments must take urgent action to prevent noncommunicable diseases from becoming an uncontrollable epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. Sugar-sweetened beverage taxation offers a potential solution.
Rwanda’s food policies focus on production to make sure people have livelihoods and enough nutritious food. Not much attention is given to overnutrition.
Tension between the government’s economic and public health priorities is preventing stronger fiscal measures to address nutrition-related noncommunicable diseases.
A tax on sugar-sweetened beverages may be intended to improve health, but for Indigenous consumers, such a tax would be unethical, contravene tax law and undermine Indigenous rights.
The rapid rise in diabetes mustn’t be overlooked, as it could have devastating health and economic effects. Most national health systems are already struggling with infectious diseases.
Professor and Programme Director, SA MRC Centre for Health Economics and Decision Science - PRICELESS SA (Priority Cost Effective Lessons in Systems Strengthening South Africa), University of the Witwatersrand