Five keys to avoid a sharp decline after age 67

Global Chief Operating Officer of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI)), Ana Cespedesnoted that although “Life expectancy in Spain is 83 years.“Only 67 people have a good quality of life.”

“Who wants to live 15 years with a poor quality of life? We need prevention to extend healthy years of life. Spain allocates 97 percent of its health budget to treating diseases and only three percent to prevention,” he said during his participation in V Symposium of the Health Observatory of El Español and Invertia.

Among other things, he criticized the waiting time bring medicines to market. “In the US, an approved drug goes on sale the next day. In Spain it takes 1.7 years.not only that, but only 50 percent of approved drugs are delivered. Without prevention, we increase the burden of disease by directing our resources to preventable diseases. “These diseases need to be reduced in order to have greater access to innovation.”

Cespedes also influenced health education, key to disease prevention because “in Spain, 21 percent have high cholesterol, 20 percent hypertension, 15 percent mental health, 12 percent low back pain, eight percent diabetes, eight percent osteoarthritis and two percent COPD.” “All of these diseases make up a significant portion of our disease burden and can be prevented by five tools: physical exercise, mental exercise, healthy eating, sleep and healthy interpersonal relationships.“, he snapped.

“This should be the government’s priority. We are developing vaccine against tuberculosis developed by a researcher from University of Zaragoza, Carlos Martin, Made in Galicia and The Spanish government is still not contributing. The German government, Bill Gates, gave us money and this is a great opportunity to put Spain on the global map of innovation,” he said.

On the other hand, Cespedes emphasized that during the investigation AIDS vaccineNonprofit associations can take on this because they have funding that the pharmaceutical industry is not entitled to, but “they don’t have the resources that the pharmaceutical industry has.” For this reason, “collaboration is essential to promote innovation and to ensure that these innovations are available throughout the world,” he noted.