UK Chronic Disease and Development Task Force call for Government action
Date Added: 25/07/11
The United Nations High Level Meeting on Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) is being held in New York, 19-20 September 2011. The UK Chronic Disease and Development Task Force – made up of NGOs, including BASL, BSG and the Alcohol Health Alliance – are urging the Prime Minister to attend.
The UN meeting in September is, the Task Force say, a unique opportunity to galvanise global action and for the UK Government to showcase achievements in this priority area (tobacco control, salt reduction, media controls on marketing of high fat, salt and sugar foods to children).
They point out that the WHO Global Status Report on Non-Communicable Diseases 20101 emphasises the high costs to healthcare systems, linking a 10% rise in NCDs with 0.5% lower rates of annual economic growth. In the UK, NCDs account for about £7 of every £10 the NHS spends on patient care.
The UN meeting is supported by the evidence presented in a recent Lancet paper produced by leading NCD scientists and civil society organisations globally. Priority Actions for the Non-Communicable Disease Crisis2 includes government “best-buys”, which can be made at fairly low cost and are achievable in most resource settings.
The Task Force has also written a letter in response to the Secretary of State for International Development, Andrew Mitchell, clarifying a number of points on the global NCD crisis.
Mitchell had made the statement that poorer people are less affected by NCDs and that the evidence base on interventions is unclear. The Task Force responded by citing the statistic that 80% of all NCDs occur in low-income and lower middle-income countries. Poorer people are disproportionally affected and the trend is likely to be futher exacerated as they are disadvantaged by inequitable access to both prevention and treatment, they say. For all the major risk factors, poorer people have the worst profile.2
Affordable, cost-effective interventions do exist for NCD prevention and treatment, the Task Force highlight. And a series of papers in The Lancet call for scaling up evidence-based interventions in 23 high burden, low-income and middle-income countries. This includes the provision of low-cost hepatitis B vaccines provided to poor people in developing countries as a basic human right.3
The Task Force urge investment and commitment of funds to support the monitoring, research and evaluation of NCD interventions and activities to supported continuous improvement of policies and programmes.
References
1. WHO (2011). WHO global status report on non-communicable diseases 2010. World Health Organization. Geneva. Available from: http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2011/9789240686458_eng.pdf [accessed 7th June 2011]
2. Beaglehole R, Bonita R, Horton R et al. Priority actions for the non-communicable disease crisis. Lancet 2011; 377: 1438-47.
3. Dans A, Ng N Varghese C et al. The rise of chronic non-communicable disease in southeast Asia: time for action. Lancet 2011:337;680-89
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2811%2960393-0/abstract