"Tempora mutantur et nos in illis" King Lothar I remarked by year 900 AD. What exactly changed in us over time, i.e. how patterns of the epidemiological transition in populations locally and globally might appear, was described by Omran in 1971 [1]. The effect of transition on health and diseases in populations was demonstrated by Frenkl et al in 1991 [2]. And which major public health problems...

It is well known that mortality in the past was dominated by crises. Prior to the industrial revolution, the contours of mortality of most human populations were punctuated with prominent spikes that could not be missed by any observer scanning a parish register for a sufficient number of pages. Choosing a year at random, the series would show more births than deaths and pretty much the same ov...

Back ground and aim: Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) is considered the most common aetiology of chronic liver disease in Egypt.Portal hypertension is a major complication of liver cirrhosis, and leads to the development of portosystmic shunts. Oesophageal varices are the most important among these shunts. Bleeding from oesophageal varices is the most serious complication of cirrhosis, with a high risk ...

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) describes itself as " an independent federal agency that conducts foreign assistance and humanitarian aid to advance the political and economic interests of the United States " (http://www.usaid.gov). The explicit nationalism in this mission statement raises a problem that stretches far beyond any particular ideology: How should the...

In 1971, Omran formulated the epidemiologic transition theory (1), which builds on the demographic transition theory but also includes the changing patterns in diseases and the causes of death. He recognizes that the epidemiologic transition of non-industrialized societies differs fundamentally from the epidemiologic transition in the developed (Western) world (2). Omran's non-Western transitio...

This supplement is based on papers presented at the Bellagio Conference on the Nutrition Transition. The meeting was organised to allow us to assess current lowand moderate-income industrialising countries’ experience related to the nutrition transition and provide ideas for pushing forth a broader public health agenda in this area. More specifically, the meeting focused on changes in patterns ...

This statement by the director for the surveillance of noncommunicable diseases at the World Health Organization (WHO) forcefully summarizes critical issues related to cardiovascular disease (CVD) in developing countries: the upsurge of the CVD epidemic and the need for an urgent response to prevent an impending additional burden that can hardly be afforded by low and middle-income countries al...

This supplement is based on papers presented at the Bellagio Conference on the Nutrition Transition. The meeting was organised to allow us to assess current lowand moderate-income industrialising countries’ experience related to the nutrition transition and provide ideas for pushing forth a broader public health agenda in this area. More specifically, the meeting focused on changes in patterns ...

T he planning, development and sustainable implementation of health policies and health systems ought to be based on precise measurements and understandings of prevalence and incidence of communicable and non-communicable diseases, accidents and other disabilities, given past and current demographic and epidemiological profiles in societies as well as how they are predicted to change over time....

Time and again we see not only does our mean life expectancy keep increasing (Fig 1), but also that this linear increase means that all predictions of our maximum life expectancy so far have turned out to be gross underestimates (Oeppen & Vaupel, 2002). Today, citizens in developed countries can easily expect to live beyond the age of 75 years—81 for women—but if we take Fig 1 as an indication,...