The UN's Battle With NCDs
How Politics, Commerce, and Science Complicated the Fight Against an 'Invisible Epidemic'
Article Summary and Author Biography
Non-communicable diseases have rapidly become a global concern: The World Economic Forum has identified NCDs as one of the top threats to worldwide development.
SHERI FINK is a senior Bernard L. Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation. REBECCA RABINOWITZ is a research associate at the New America Foundation.
Author Interview
Once considered a scourge just on the affluent West, as the developing world grows wealthier and more sedentary, NCDs now loom as a serious public health concern in emerging markets as well. A conversation with UN official Ala Alwan.
Snapshot
Over the last three decades, public funding for global health organizations has dried up. Private companies are writing checks to fill the gap, and, accordingly, they are bending the agenda toward their interests. Realigning priorities, however, will mean getting more private firms involved, not less.
Puffing away in China. (SpAvAAi / flickr)
The World Health Organization (WHO) calls it an "invisible epidemic." In the United States and now many parts of the developing world, the biggest killers are no longer infectious diseases, such as HIV and AIDS or malaria, but rather chronic conditions, such as heart and lung disease, cancer, and diabetes. Often the preventable result of unhealthy diets, tobacco, and alcohol use and a lack of physical activity, these non-communicable diseases, or NCDs, now account for two out of every three deaths worldwide.
Most surprising, perhaps, is that NCDs have rapidly gone from afflictions of the developed world to afflictions of the developing world. "Very many unhealthy habits have crept in," says Troy Torrington, of Guyana's mission to the United Nations. Those include a lack of exercise, the consumption of junk food, and the use of alcohol and tobacco promoted by aggressive sales and marketing campaigns. In sum, the lifestyles of people in the developing world are becoming more like those in the United States. This is not just an individual, or even a government-level, health issue. There is a global concern as well: The World Economic Forum has identified NCDs as one of the top threats to worldwide development, as they are driving up health-care costs, disabling workers, and exacting debilitating financial tolls on households.
Read more at at Foreign Affairs' Special Report: Global Public Health.
