"This book is in many ways a manual for the public health decathlete, although
the editors have gone much further by including 15, not 10, items. These items cover
many of the contemporary challenges confronting population health. Seven chapters
review the changing burden of disease and injury, providing many examples of
the tremendous successes of the public health community. The most celebrated have
been those in the struggle against communicable disease, with the authors noting
achievements in transforming acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) into
a condition that those infected die with rather than from. However, there are others,
less well-recognised, such as the 50 % decline in mortality from cardiovascular
disease in North Western Europe in the past four decades. Yet, as the authors of all
of these chapters note, progress is not inevitable. Communicable diseases that once
seemed to be coming under control are reappearing, such as tuberculosis, but now
in a much more alarming drug-resistant form. Indeed, antimicrobial resistance is
now recognised as a global threat, potentially posing an existential threat to humanity,
just like climate change. Failure by governments to act against the vectors of
non-communicable disease, and especially the major corporations that profit from
sales of unhealthy products, for example by placing considerations of health above
those of trade liberalisation, has permitted the spread of obesogenic and alcogenic
environments, with profound consequences for our future health."
