By Pepe Escobar
BANGKOK – A Big Pharma star player – Sanofi Aventis – has been battling a stock market tsunami these past few days. It was all caused by a negative rumor about one of its best-selling products, Lantus (or glargine) – an insulin-a-day wonder that is key in the fight against diabetes.
Tens of thousands of Lantus users panicked. Diabetes is a complex disease with multiple angles, touching tens of millions of people around the world. The stakes – strategic, financial and in terms of health – are enormous. Welcome to the New Health Great Game.
Asia is getting fat. Literally. And that spells trouble. The best specialists agree that obesity is largely responsible for a global diabetes epidemic. For instance, 25% of China’s 1.3 billion people re already overweight. 2.8% of Chinese males and 5% of females are obese; and no less than 16.1% of males and 37% of females suffer from what is graciously defined as “abdominal obesity”. In a nation of no less than 350 million smokers, 60% of them males, and with female smoking also rising, that spells a monster red alert.
By 2025, no less than 20 million people all over the world will be dying of cardiovascular diseases – mainly coronary diseases and strokes, linked to a cluster of risk factors that include obesity. And this will especially affect low and middle-income countries, as are most in Asia.
The medical diagnosis is implacable, as presented by Professor Rody Sy, of the University of the Philippines. “Carbohydrates in excess of energy needs” lead to “abdominal obesity”, and that causes “dyslipidemia [major alterations in cholesterol traffic], hypertension and diabetes”. This carbohydrate-rich diet may be better handled in rural areas, where people move about more often; but in increasingly urbanized – and sedentary – Asia it can be lethal. What to do about it?