Respiratory Decade

A new data shows that one in four adolescents worldwide, around 240 million young people 🏃‍♀️aged 11–17, did not get 60 minutes of #physicalactivity on any day of the previous week. “For 15 years, the world has made almost no progress in getting young people moving, and girls are being left furthest behind,” said @DrTedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “The answer is not to tell adolescents to try harder. It is to build schools, streets and communities where moving, playing and being active is safe, easy and normal.” The analysis draws on 389 population-based surveys from 140 countries, covering more than 3.2 million adolescents. On average, young people were active on 2.7 days a week, and only 14% were active every day. Levels have barely changed since 2010. The gap between countries is wide: some have 4% of adolescents with no active days, others more than 40%. Girls are less active than boys in almost every country and every @WHO region. 28% of girls reported no active days, compared with 22% of boys. Inactivity in adolescence lays the foundation for heart disease, type 2 #diabetes and some cancers later in life. Making activity safe, easy and normal in schools, on walking and cycling routes and in communities is one of the most effective investments in preventing #NCDs noncommunicable diseases. who.int/news/item/04-11-2026…

How briskly do you walk? A new study in @JAMANetworkOpen suggests your walking 🚶🏽‍♀️ pace may tell as much about your #health as the number of steps you take. Researchers led by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology followed 4,067 British civil servants, with an average #age of 69. Each person had their walking speed measured in a clinic and wore a wrist tracker that recorded their cadence (steps per minute) in everyday life. A faster clinical #walking speed was associated with a 23% lower risk of death from any cause, and a higher everyday cadence with a 17% lower risk. Both links held after adjusting for total daily steps. How fast you move matters, not just how far. Picking up the pace on daily walking is an easy goal for most of us. doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworko…

WHO Special Envoy José Luis Castro: Chronic Lung Diseases 🫁 Affect Around Half a Billion People, Yet Continue to Be Overlooked Chronic lung diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease #COPD and asthma, affect half a billion people worldwide, and COPD is the third leading cause of death. Nevertheless, these conditions receive less attention in national health policies than cardiovascular diseases and cancer, @JLCastroGarcia of the @WHO told the Polish Press Agency (PAP). Since 1 September 2024, Castro has served as the WHO Director-General’s Special Envoy for Chronic Respiratory Diseases (CRDs). On 25 September this year, José Luis Castro visited Poland to participate in a conference held at the Polish Parliament (Sejm) entitled “The Lungs of Poles: Challenges and Priorities for Public Health,” organized as part of the observance of #WorldLungDay. “People generally associate #lung diseases with infectious causes, such as tuberculosis. These diseases do indeed affect millions of people worldwide. But there are also chronic lung diseases, such as asthma and COPD, which affect half a billion people and cause four million deaths annually. Despite this, public awareness of these conditions remains significantly lower,” Castro told PAP. The expert recalled that chronic obstructive #pulmonary disease (COPD) is considered the third leading cause of death worldwide. Yet it is rarely the subject of media coverage. According to the International #Respiratory Coalition, citing data from the Global Burden of Disease 2023 study, more than 38 million people in the European region live with COPD. “When I took up my position at WHO in 2024, I reviewed articles and media reports about chronic lung diseases (...) and found one article published in The New York Times that mentioned COPD as the cause of death of Sinéad O’Connor [the Irish singer-songwriter],” Castro recalled. He emphasized that the disease had received coverage only because it affected a celebrity. In his view, one of the problems surrounding COPD is that it continues to be mistakenly perceived as a disease affecting only older people and smokers, contributing to the stigmatization of patients. “COPD does not affect only older people or smokers. It also affects people who have never smoked, and the factors that predispose someone to develop the disease may arise very early in life. Air pollution, exposure to harmful substances in the workplace, and factors affecting lung development all contribute to the disease,” the specialist explained. He emphasized that everyone living with COPD deserves a timely diagnosis, effective #treatment, and care free from stigma. Full piece at naukawpolsce.pl/aktualnosci/…