The 67th World Health Assembly is happening this week in Geneva, and one of the key issues on the agenda is noncommunicable diseases.
NCDs — cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic respiratory disease — result in more than 36 million deaths each year, and 80 percent of these occur in low- and middle-income countries. In Africa, deaths from NCDs are expected to outpace those stemming from infectious, maternal, prenatal and nutritious diseases by 2030.
The World Economic Forum estimates NCDs can cost the global economy more than $30 trillion — or 48 percent of the world’s gross domestic product in 2010 — in the next two decades.