That the AIDS pandemic is threatening sustainable development in Africa only reinforces the reality that health is at the center of sustainable development.

• Today osteoporosis affects more than 75 million people in the United States, Europe and Japan and causes more than 2.3 million fractures in the USA and Europe alone.
• A safe and nutritionally adequate diet is a basic individual right and an essential condition for sustainable development, especially in developing countries.
• Such lifestyle factors such as cigarette smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, little physical activity and low dietary calcium intake are risk factors for osteoporosis as well as for many other non-communicable diseases.
• We are also in the process of defining how best to work together with food and other companies to address diet and physical activity factors in order to prevent chronic diseases.
• You cannot achieve environmental security and human development without addressing the basic issues of health and nutrition.
• More than ever before, there is a global understanding that long-term social, economic, and environmental development would be impossible without healthy families, communities, and countries.
• Investing in health will produce enormous benefits.
• Contaminated food is a major cause of diarrhea, substantially contributing to malnutrition and killing about 2.2 million people each year, most of them children.
• The development of the food industry for both domestic and export markets relies on a regulatory framework that both protects the consumer and assures fair trading practices in food.
• We are also in the process of defining how best to work together with food and other companies to address diet and physical activity factors in order to prevent chronic diseases.