Alarm At Potential Pobile Phone Cancer Link

A World Health Organization warning of increased brain cancer risk for cellular phone users had many alarmed but resigned to needing the devices to do their jobs.

"It's really scaring me. Usually, I put it on a speaker, or I only use it in an emergency. And it is really scary because of my kids," Milite Andom, 49, a street vendor with teenaged children, told AFP.

"They talk too much on their cells (mobiles), and I was telling my kids, but they do not want to hear it," Andom added.

The WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) announced Tuesday after meeting in France that radio-frequency electromagnetic fields generated by such devices are "possibly carcinogenic to humans."

The IARC cautioned that current scientific evidence showed only a possible link, not a proven one, between wireless devices and cancers.

Stroke, diabetes, cancer on the prowl, says WHO

NON-COMMUNICABLE diseases like heart diseases, stroke, diabetes and cancer, now make up two-thirds of all deaths globally, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned ahead of the 64th World Health Assembly, which begins today in Geneva.

A report released by WHO attributed the new health burden to the spread of risk factors associated with globalisation and urbanisation.

According to the World Health Statistics 2011 report, an increasing number of countries are facing health threats from both infectious and chronic diseseas, even as they struggle to reduce maternal and child deaths caused by infectious diseases.

World Health Statistics 2011 is a yearly report based on more than 100 health indicators reported by WHO’s 193 member states and other reliable sources.   These data provide a snapshot of the global health situation and trends.

The latest WHO figures showed that about four out of 10 men and one in 11 women are using tobacco and about one in eight adults is obese.

In addition, the report stated that many developing countries have continued to battle health issues such as pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria that are most likely to kill children under the age of five.