The Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos is the foremost neutral meeting between business leaders, politicians and NGO-leaders. I had the pleasure of participating last week as a member of the Forum of Young Global Leaders in WEF. Is Davos just a nice chattering meeting in the Swiss alps, or does the meeting result in actions that improves the state of the world?

Ten years ago Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) was launched in Davos as a partnership of developing countries, international development, philanthropic groups, the pharmaceutical industry and others. A grant of USD 750 million from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was followed by funding from Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the USA. Last friday in Davos, Bill and Melinda Gates announced that their foundation will commit $10 billion over the next 10 years to help research, develop and deliver vaccines for the world’s poorest countries.

The Gateses said that increased investment in vaccines by governments and the private sector could help developing countries dramatically reduce child mortality by the end of the decade, and they called for others to help fill critical financing gaps in both research funding and childhood immunization programs. “We must make this the decade of vaccines,” said Bill Gates. “Vaccines already save and improve millions of lives in developing countries. Innovation will make it possible to save more children than ever before.

I had the pleasure of meeting Bill Gates along with other Young Global Leaders Saturday morning and his commitment to improvements in global health was applauded. Gates also recognizes a rising threat to global health and that is the rise of chronic diseases. Over the next decade, if not addressed effectively, chronic diseases will increase by 27% in Africa, 25% in the Middle East and 21% in Asia and Pacific, accounting for 75% of all deaths globally.

This is a problem neither the developed nor the developing world can afford. One-half of those that die from chronic diseases are in their productive years. The World Economic Forum in it’s Global Risk Report 2010, ranked the rise of chronic diseases as the second most severe of all identified risks for our global population.
What can we do about this rising risk of chronic diseases? We can start out with prevention. Eight well known risk factors are the major contributors to these costly illnesses: smoking, physical inactivity, poor diet, alcohol consumption levels, poor standard of care compliance, poor stress management, insufficient sleep and lack of health screening. See http://wellness.weforum.org

Chronic illness costs, combating it pays. We need society, businesses and individuals to collaborate to engage the subject of wellness, and how we can prevent chronic diseases. We know that 1 out of 3 cancer incidences can be avoided through a wellness program with healthy diet, physical activity and smoking cessation.

The World Economic Forum has in collaboration with BCG launched a wellness app where businesses and employers can model the impact of a comprehensive wellness program in their organizations. The savings in Europe for reduced absenteeism, reduced healthcare costs, and improved productivity is substantial according to BCG research.

On of the taskforces of Young Global Leaders will work to develop metrics to measure the Wellness factor. What does it mean to be well? How do we the measure success of prevention programs? What is our vision for global wellness? The World Economic Forum has created the Global Competitiveness Indicators where each country is measured up against each other for their ability to economically compete in the global market place. Within this competitiveness indicator, health and education are small factors of competitiveness. The health component currently measures factors such as life expectancy, maternity and child mortality, and prevalence of infectious diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and diarrhea. In this instance, health is primarily being defined within a disease framework.

The YGL Healthcare Taskforce will create and test a “Wellness Factor” which would measure global wellness compiling various indicators that go beyond infectious diseases and life expectancy. It would be a “measure of success” for all kinds of prevention programs around the world implemented by government, private sector and civil society. It also may become an indicator of productivity potential and future disease risk/rates. Please have your say at our website and contribute your idea combat chronic diseases at: http://redesignourworld.com/

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