The World Health Organisation on Wednesday launched strategies aimed at getting Europeans to start moving and stop smoking over the next decade to defuse what it termed the ticking time-bomb of sedentary lifestyles. “Health systems across the region (Europe) risk being crippled by people suffering the effects of physical inactivity and sedentary behaviour,” Doctor Zsuzsanna Jakab, WHO Regional Director for Europe, said in a Wednesday statement issued at talks in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. “Rates of overweight and obesity are rising dramatically” in 46 of the 53 countries in its European region, the WHO noted in the same statement.

By Chris Arsenault TORONTO (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Despite a drop in the number of people facing starvation, nearly one in three of the world’s population are malnourished, even as obesity spreads around the globe, an international food security think-tank said on Tuesday. Stunting – children too short for their age due to a poor diet – affects more than 160 million children under five years old, the International Food Policy Research Institute said in its Global Nutrition Report. The number of hungry people in the world fell, but obesity rose between 2010 and 2014 “in every single country”, and one in 12 adults worldwide now has Type 2 diabetes, the report said.

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) called for a ban on boxing on Tuesday following the death of a 28-year-old fighter after he was knocked unconscious in the ring. The father-of-two was knocked out 30 seconds from the end of the super featherweight 12-round contest against Carlo Magali of the Philippines, and collapsed on his stool before being hospitalised in critical condition with brain injuries. AMA vice-president Dr Stephen Parnis said it was time to ban boxing.

By Kathryn Doyle (Reuters Health) – Over time, eating a Mediterranean-style diet that emphasizes fish, vegetables and particularly olive oil, may lower women’s risk of breast cancer compared to following a low-fat diet, suggests a new study from Spain. In the five-year trial that randomly assigned women to different kinds of diets, those instructed to eat a Mediterranean-style diet with four tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil per day had about half as many breast cancer diagnoses as those on a low-fat diet. “With an overall healthy diet plus extra virgin olive oil there is a reduction in the hard endpoint of breast cancer,” said senior author Dr. Miguel A. Martinez-Gonzalez of the University of Navarra in Pamplona and CIBEROBN in Madrid.