This presentation talks about who is at risk of developing diabetes and how diabetes will affect the future generations. You will be introduced to how the global amount of people diagnosed with diabetes, according to the WHO and the IDF, will increase from just over 400 million to 600 million by 2030.

Narrator: Richard Steed.

Infectious diseases have a specific, ethiological cause, e.g. a microbe such as tuberculosis caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. However, most people exposed to TB does not develop the disease. What determines this may be poverty, weakening of the person by other diseases or smoking and alcohol. So-called life-style diseases are (also) determined by the way you live, and include prevalent non-communicable diseases such as type 2 diabetes and cardio-vascular diseases, but besides of risk factors such as smoking and drinking or over-eating, the living conditions matter equally and sometimes more. The environment, climate changes, urbanization, socio-economic factors all impact health and disease. When an individual grows older, patterns of his/her diseases changes: the same applies when a society grows ‘older’.

Previously infectious diseases previously caused the majority of ill-health and premature death globally, but in high- and middle-income countries during the 20.th century infectious diseases – with the exception of HIV – declined. Introduction of hygiene and discovery of microbes and later vaccines an antibiotics contributed to the decline, but changing living conditions with better housing, nutrition, water and sanitation were the main drivers of infectious diseases’ decline.

This presentation provides an introduction to infectious diseases like tuberculosis, vector-borne diseases, puerperal sepsis, streptococcus septicemia, etc. and how these diseases have affected global health over the last two centuries and decades.

In this presentation the achievement regarding the 8 millennium goals (MDG), set by the United Nation’s member states to be reached by 2015 are reviewed, with emphasis on Infectious diseases, such as HIV, TB malaria and other vector-borne diseases, including Chagas’ disease and African trypanosomiasis, the latter belong to the ‘neglected tropical diseases’. What made it happen and why (not) is discussed.

In this presentation the global burden of diseases – deaths as well as disabilities – jointly named DALYs – is presented and differences and similarities between lo-, middle-, and high-income countries presently and over time are presented. The strict division between non-communicable and communicable (infectious) diseases is also challenged, and propositions on how to manage them jointly are given. The double burden of NCD+overnutrition and CD+undernutrition in societies in fast transition is presented. The present vs. the expected global burden of diseases by the year 2030 are also introduced.