Cool drinks kill 1 person every hour
ACROSS South Africa, sugar-sweetened beverages result in one death every hour, says Professor Karen Hofman, director of Priceless SA (Priority Cost Effective Lessons for System Strengthening South Africa), a programme hosted by Wits University and the SA Medical Research Council.
The programme aims to enable smart decisions about health investments in South Africa, and has come out in support of the proposed tax.
“Each year, 250 000 South Africans are being diagnosed as clinically obese. If South Africans don’t drastically reduce the number of cool drinks, juices and sugar-sweetened beverages they drink every day, there will be more than 9 million obese adults in the country by 2017.
“While this tax will boost revenue, a point which South Africans are missing which is equally, if not more important, is the cost of inaction should this tax not be implemented.”
The health system would not cope, she added, referring to studies that Priceless SA had undertaken.
Hofman said South Africa was the most obese nation on the continent, joining Mexico and the US.
“The 2017 projection, captured in a study by Priceless, means there will be 1.2 million more obese adults in South Africa. And more than one-quarter of these people will be obese because of the sugar sweetened beverages they drank. These drinks are not the only reason for the increase in obesity. But because they are high in sugar and contain no essential nutrients, they are a significant contributor.”
For adults, drinking just one a day increases the likelihood of being overweight by almost 30 percent. For children, this risk increases to more than 50 percent. Other factors that contribute are eating fast food or processed food regularly and not exercising, according to Hofman.
“Lifestyle diseases related to obesity, which can result in strokes, blindness, amputations and kidney failure, not only shorten one’s lifespan but also affect their quality of life. These deaths and disabilities place a major financial strain on families and on the already overburdened healthcare system. Obese people are costing 50 percent more in whealth care compared with the average healthy consumer. If you extrapolate the cost of lifestyle disease to the fiscus, it has a bearing on the economy overall, the Department of Health and eventually the taxpayer,” she said.
The proposed tax would possibly paint a better picture. “If preventive measures are not introduced it is likely people will drink more and more sugar-sweetened drinks over the next few years.
Lancet Research on seven different best buys to prevent obesity shows that taxes are the most cost-effective intervention with most impact. Taxes cannot and should not work in isolation and are just the first step in a process, followed by food advertising regulation and then food labelling.
“A tax is one of the many interventions that need to work hand in hand and the highlighted ones have been identified as being the most cost-effective.
“South Africa’s healthcare budget, like others, is not infinite. This means every rand spent on one intervention is a rand not spent on another. Tradeoffs are inevitable and how we prioritise resources fairly and equitably must be based on evidence of what works and at what cost. On this basis, the tax makes complete sense.”
The policy paper document is available at www.treasury.gov.za