Obesity, boozing and other lifestyle risks facing teenagers in
the rich world are spreading fast to counterparts in poorer
countries, a probe published on Wednesday in The Lancet said.
"The high-income world has been grappling with a rising tide of
risks for non-communicable diseases, including the problems of
obesity, physical inactivity, alcohol, tobacco and illicit drug
use," it said. "That tide is now overwhelming many low and
middle-income countries who have yet to bring in measures to
control the problems of injury, infectious disease and maternal
mortality in this young age group." The medical journal
published a study of health problems facing the world's 1.8
billion adolescents, the biggest tally of this age group in
human history. It defines this term as young people aged 10 to
24, at which the brain is considered to have reached physical
maturity. The risks facing young people are many, but often are
poorly understood and undocumented, said the review. They
include deaths from road accidents, which