Prevention and control of NCD's

Prevention and control of NCD's

To lessen the impact of NCDs on individuals and society, a comprehensive approach is needed that requires all sectors, including health, finance, foreign affairs, education, agriculture, planning and others, to work together to reduce the risks associated with NCDs, as well as promote the interventions to prevent and control them.

An important way to reduce NCDs is to focus on lessening the risk factors associated with these diseases. Low-cost solutions exist to reduce the common modifiable risk factors (mainly tobacco use, unhealthy diet and physical inactivity, and the harmful use of alcohol) and map the epidemic of NCDs and their risk factors (1).

Other ways to reduce NCDs are high impact essential NCD interventions that can be delivered through a primary health-care approach to strengthen early detection and timely treatment. Evidence shows that such interventions are excellent economic investments because, if applied to patients early, can reduce the need for more expensive treatment. These measures can be implemented in various resource levels. The greatest impact can be achieved by creating healthy public policies that promote NCD prevention and control and reorienting health systems to address the needs of people with such diseases.

Lower-income countries generally have lower capacity for the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases.

High-income countries are nearly four times more likely to have NCD services covered by health insurance than low-income countries. Countries with inadequate health insurance coverage are unlikely to provide universal access to essential NCD interventions.

WHO response

The 2008-2013 Action plan of the global strategy for the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases provides Member States, WHO and international partners with steps on how to address NCDs in countries.

WHO is also responding with measures that lessen the risk factors that are associated with NCDs.

• Implementation by countries of the anti-tobacco measures laid out in the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control can greatly reduce public exposure to tobacco.
• The WHO Global strategy on diet, physical activity and health aims to promote and protect health by enabling communities to reduce disease and death rates related to unhealthy diet and physical inactivity.
• The WHO Global strategy to reduce the harmful use of alcohol offers measures and identifies priority areas of action to protect people from harmful alcohol use.
• As requested by the UN Political Declaration on NCDs, WHO is developing a comprehensive global monitoring framework for the prevention and control of NCDs, including a set of indicators and a set of voluntary global targets.
• In response to a resolution (WHA 64.11) of the World Health Assembly, WHO is developing the Global NCD Action Plan 2013-20 to provide a roadmap for the implementation of the political commitments of the UN High-level Meeting. The draft action plan will be up for adoption by the World Health Assembly in May 2013.

from World Health Organization,

Fact sheet 
Updated March 2013

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs355/en/

(SEE ALSO NCD's, what are they?)