The WTS loves to talk about "how bad things are getting", yet they always fail to talk about problems like this: There is now so much food available in the world that people are dieing from eating too much. For the first time in history there are more obese people than starving people.
http://www.physorg.com/news82607698.html
Diabetes epidemic could wipe out indigenous peoples: experts
Indigenous peoples around the world faced extinction this century unless an obesity-driven diabetes epidemic was curbed, experts told an international conference in Australia Monday.
"We are dealing with the biggest epidemic in world history," said the director of Monash University's International Diabetes Institute, Professor Paul Zimmet.
"Without urgent action there certainly is a real risk of a major wipe-out of indigenous communities, if not total extinction, within this century," he told an International Diabetes Federation meeting in Melbourne.
The "diabesity" epidemic threatened the original inhabitants of Asia, Australia, the Pacific, and North and South America, he said.
Indigenous people were particularly at risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, which was primarily caused by obesity, because of the rapid transition to Western diets and lifestyles, Zimmet said.
The "thrifty gene" allowed communities of hunter-gatherers to store fat in times of feast for survival of famines, but modern lifestyles provided continuous "feasts" and less exercise, he told AFP.
Complications of Type 2 diabetes, now being found in indigenous children as young as six years old, include increased risk of heart disease, stroke and kidney disease.
Canadian diabetes expert Professor Stewart Harris said with up to half the adult populations in some indigenous communities affected, diabetes posed a serious threat to their survival.
"The rapid cultural transition over one to two generations of many indigenous communities to a Western diet and sedentary lifestyle has led to diabetes replacing infectious diseases as the number one threat to their survival," he said.
Type 2 diabetes already affected 50 percent of adults on the Pacific Island of Nauru, up to 45 percent of Sioux and Pima Indians in the United States, and up to 30 percent of Torres Strait Islanders in northern Australia, he said.
Diabetes was unknown in the Pacific islands before World War II, the conference heard.
Among Torres Strait Islanders, children as young as six have been diagnosed with diabetes, Cairns Base Hospital director Ashim Sinha told the meeting, and teenagers were found to have high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
"These children are prone to develop heart attacks, renal failure and blindness but at a much younger age," he said.
The world-first three-day conference on diabetes in indigenous peoples aims to agree on a set of measures to present to the United Nations for an international effort to curb the epidemic.
These are likely to include improved maternal and child health services, and access to an affordable and nutritious diet for impoverished communities, particularly through child care centres and schools.
The experts said because dramatic changes to indigenous health had happened relatively quickly and were largely environmental, it was likely the trend could be reversed with appropriate management.
Obesity has reached pandemic proportions throughout the world, not just in indigenous communities, and is the greatest single contributor to chronic disease, the 10th International Congress on Obesity heard in Sydney in September.
The world now has more fat people than hungry ones, according to World Health Organisation figures, with more than a billion overweight people compared to 800 million who are undernourished.