Philippine sugary drinks tax could ‘avert 24,000 deaths’

India drains lake

MANILA, Dec 6, (Agencies): The Philippines could avert 24,000 premature deaths linked to diseases such as diabetes, stroke and heart failure in the next two decades after it adopted taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.

The taxes levied this year could cut consumption and avoid nearly 6,000 deaths related to diabetes, 8,000 from stroke and more than 10,000 from heart diseases over 20 years, a WHO research study showed.

“The new sugar-sweetened beverage tax may help reduce obesityrelated premature deaths and improve financial well-being in the Philippines,” the researchers said.

Obesity

The taxes, part of a series of reforms aimed at helping to fund infrastructure, could yield healthcare savings of about $627 million and annual revenue of $813 million, they added.

The high consumption of colas was the main driver of obesity, swelling the burden of non-communicable diseases, the WHO said.

Retail prices of sugar-sweetened beverages have risen as much as 13 percent after the Philippines imposed the taxes in January, joining 27 countries with similar levies.

The WHO has backed taxation as a way of curbing rising obesity if retail prices rise 10 percent to 20 percent to cut consumption.

In 2013, 31 percent of the total Philippine adult population of 56.3 million was overweight, the agency said, with the proportion of overweight youth nearly doubling to 8.3 percent from close to 5 percent within just a decade.

Indian authorities are pumping water out of a sprawling southern lake to assuage villagers’ fears it was contaminated after the discovery of the body of a woman infected with HIV, a regional official said on Wednesday.

The virus is usually transmitted through sexual intercourse, infected blood and from an infected mother to the baby in her womb or through breastfeeding, but the villagers’ alarm at the discovery a week ago drove the demand for the lake to be drained, the official added.

“We tried our best to assure the villagers that we would get the water tested, but they did not budge and even refused to come near the lake,” said Naveen Hullur, who is in charge of the area.

The lake near the village of Morab in Karnataka, about 440 km (273 miles) from the state’s capital of Bengaluru, covers 32 acres (13 hectares).

It is a key source of drinking water for more than 1,000 people who live in the drought-affected region and earn their livelihoods by farming.

The drainage operation has run for the last four days and fresh water from a nearby canal is to be used to replenish the lake over the next four to five days, Hullur added. He did not provide additional details.

It was not immediately clear what the cost of the drainage operation is. Public health officials in the region did not immediately respond to telephone calls and email messages from Reuters to seek comment.

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