World governments focus too much on fighting terrorism while obesity and other "lifestyle diseases" are killing millions more people, the Oxford Health Alliance Summit, an international conference, heard Monday, February 25 in Sydney.
Overcoming deadly factors such as poor diet, smoking and a lack of exercise should take top priority in the fight against a growing epidemic of preventable chronic disease, legal and health experts said.

Global terrorism was a real threat but posed far less risk than obesity, diabetes and smoking-related illnesses, prominent U.S. professor of health law Lawrence Gostin said at the Oxford Health Alliance Summit.

"Ever since September 11, we've been lurching from one crisis to the next, which has really frightened the public," Gostin told Agence France Presse later.

"While we've been focusing so much attention on that, we've had this silent epidemic of obesity that's killing millions of people around the world, and we're devoting very little attention to it and a negligible amount of money."

The fifth annual conference of the Oxford Health Alliance -- co-founded by Oxford University -- has brought together world experts from academia, government, business, law, economics and urban planning to promote change.

An estimated 388 million people will die from chronic disease worldwide over the next 10 years, according to World Health Organization figures quoted by the alliance.

"There's a political paralysis in dealing with the issue," said Gostin, an adviser to the U.S. government and a professor at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins universities.

He noted that prevention of obesity and its effects had hardly rated a mention in the current campaign for the U.S. presidency.

"Yet the human costs are frightening when we consider that obesity could shorten the average lifespan of an entire generation, resulting in the first reversal in life expectancy since data collecting began in 1900," he said.

Like terrorism, some passing health threats get major government attention and media coverage, while heart and lung disease, diabetes and cancer account for 60 percent of the world's deaths, the meeting was told.

"It is true that new and re-emerging health threats such as SARS, avian flu, HIV/AIDS, terrorism, bioterrorism and climate change are dramatic and emotive," said Stig Pramming, the Oxford group's executive director. "However, it is preventable chronic disease that will send health systems and economies to the wall."

The conference is due to end Wednesday with a "Sydney Resolution" calling on governments and big business among others to take action to avert millions of premature deaths due to chronic disease.

Insufficient physical exercise is a risk factor in many chronic diseases and is estimated to cause 1.9 million deaths worldwide each year, said Tony Capon, professor of health studies at Australia's Macquarie University.

"We need to build the physical activity back into our lives and it's not simply about bike paths, it's about developing an urban habitat that enables people to live healthy lives: ensuring that people can meet most of their daily needs within walking and cycling distance of where they live," he said.