The world health report 1998: life in the 21st century A vision for all / The world health report 1998: life in the 21st century A vision for all

ABSTRACT

What will life in the 21st century? Will the world continue to grow healthier, with ever more diseases conquered by scientific advances, and life expectancy extending even longer? Or will new diseases and failing drugs cancel out these gains? If populations live longer, will these extra years be healthy and productive or merely an extended sentence of suffering? Will continuing population growth finally stifle the panet's life, depleting finite resources, polluting beyond repair, and making megacities and urban slums the home for more and more? Or will better finally planning options - and mounting deaths from AIDS - reverse recent trends? Will we conquer malnutrition, obesity, drug abuse, poverty, depression, and the common cold? Will we eradicate polio, leprosy, measles and other anciest foes? Will deaths from heart disease and cancer finally begin to decline? And when will be able to afford them? Will the gaps between the health of rich and poor grow ever wider? These are some of the many questions addressed in The World Health Report 1998. Issued as the World Health Organization marks its 50th anniversary, the report takes an expert look at health trends over the past five decades, assesses the current global situation, and predicts how health conditions, diseases, and the tools for managing them will evolve up to the year 2025. Using the latest data gathered and validated by WHO, the report paints a picture of a world posed to achieve unprecedent good health - if the lessons learned during recent decades are understood and heeded