Priorities for developing countries in the global response to non-communicable diseases

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Abstract

The growing global burden of non communicable diseases (NCDs) is now killing 36 million people each year and needs urgent and comprehensive action. This article provides an overview of key critical issues that need to be resolved to ensure that recent political commitments are translated into practical action. These include: (i) categorizing and prioritizing NCDs in order to inform donor funding commitments and priorities for intervention; (ii) finding the right balance between the relative importance of treatment and prevention to ensure that responses cover those at risk, and those who are already sick; (iii) defining the appropriate health systems response to address the needs of patients with diseases characterized by long duration and often slow progression; (iv) research needs, in particular translational research in the delivery of care; and (v) sustained funding to support the global NCD response.

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Expansion of cancer care and control in countries of low and middle income: a call to action.

Paul A. Farmer, Julio M. Frenk, Felicia M. Knaul … (2010)

Substantial inequalities exist in cancer survival rates across countries. In addition to prevention of new cancers by reduction of risk factors, strategies are needed to close the gap between developed and developing countries in cancer survival and the effects of the disease on human suffering. We challenge the public health community's assumption that cancers will remain untreated in poor countries, and note the analogy to similarly unfounded arguments from more than a decade ago against provision of HIV treatment. In resource-constrained countries without specialised services, experience has shown that much can be done to prevent and treat cancer by deployment of primary and secondary caregivers, use of off-patent drugs, and application of regional and global mechanisms for financing and procurement. Furthermore, several middle-income countries have included cancer treatment in national health insurance coverage with a focus on people living in poverty. These strategies can reduce costs, increase access to health services, and strengthen health systems to meet the challenge of cancer and other diseases. In 2009, we formed the Global Task Force on Expanded Access to Cancer Care and Control in Developing Countries, which is composed of leaders from the global health and cancer care communities, and is dedicated to proposal, implementation, and evaluation of strategies to advance this agenda. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Preventing chronic diseases: how many lives can we save?

Kathleen Strong, Colin D Mathers, Stephen R Leeder … (2005)

35 million people will die in 2005 from heart disease, stroke, cancer, and other chronic diseases. Only 20% of these deaths will be in high-income countries--while 80% will occur in low-income and middle-income countries. The death rates from these potentially preventable diseases are higher in low-income and middle-income countries than in high-income countries, especially among adults aged 30-69 years. The impact on men and women is similar. We propose a new goal for reducing deaths from chronic disease to focus prevention and control efforts among those concerned about international health. This goal-to reduce chronic disease death rates by an additional 2% annually--would avert 36 million deaths by 2015. An additional benefit will be a gain of about 500 million years of life over the 10 years from 2006 to 2015. Most of these averted deaths and life-years gained will be in low-income and middle-income countries, and just under half will be in people younger than 70 years. We base the global goal on worldwide projections of deaths by cause for 2005 and 2015. The data are presented for the world, selected countries, and World Bank income groups.

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Prevention of cardiovascular disease in high-risk individuals in low-income and middle-income countries: health effects and costs.

Thomas Gaziano, Ashvini Reddy, Rafael Lozano … (2007)

In 2005, a global goal of reducing chronic disease death rates by an additional 2% per year was established. Scaling up coverage of evidence-based interventions to prevent cardiovascular disease in high-risk individuals in low-income and middle-income countries could play a major part in reaching this goal. We aimed to estimate the number of deaths that could be averted and the financial cost of scaling up, above current coverage levels, a multidrug regimen for prevention of cardiovascular disease (a statin, aspirin, and two blood-pressure-lowering medicines) in 23 such countries. Identification of individuals was limited to those already accessing health services, and treatment eligibility was based on the presence of existing cardiovascular disease or absolute risk of cardiovascular disease by use of easily measurable risk factors. Over a 10-year period, scaling up this multidrug regimen could avert 17.9 million deaths from cardiovascular disease (95% uncertainty interval 7.4 million-25.7 million). 56% of deaths averted would be in those younger than 70 years, with more deaths averted in women than in men owing to larger absolute numbers of women at older ages. The 10-year financial cost would be US$47 billion ($33 billion-$61 billion) or an average yearly cost per head of $1.08 ($0.75-1.40), ranging from $0.43 to $0.90 across low-income countries and from $0.54 to $2.93 across middle-income countries. This package could effectively meet three-quarters of the proposed global goal with a moderate increase in health expenditure.

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Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Global Health

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Global Health

Title: Globalization and Health

Publisher: BioMed Central

ISSN (Electronic): 1744-8603

Publication date Collection: 2012

Publication date (Electronic): 11 June 2012

Volume: 8

Page: 14

Affiliations

[1 ]London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London, England

[2 ]Médecins Sans Frontières, Geneva, Switzerland

[3 ]Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Research, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

[4 ]Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of The West Indies Cave Hill Campus, Bridgetown, Barbados

Article

Publisher ID: 1744-8603-8-14

DOI: 10.1186/1744-8603-8-14

PMC ID: 3425139

PubMed ID: 22686126

SO-VID: e716dd06-f7b1-4f67-b69f-6e2332383ab5

License:

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

History

Date received : 21 September 2011

Date accepted : 29 May 2012

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Priorities for developing countries in the global response to non-communicable diseases

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Most cited references 24

Expansion of cancer care and control in countries of low and middle income: a call to action.

Preventing chronic diseases: how many lives can we save?

Prevention of cardiovascular disease in high-risk individuals in low-income and middle-income countries: health effects and costs.

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