The Global Health Observatory data from the World Health Organization shows that the African region suffers more than 24 percent of the global burden of disease, yet has access to only 3 percent of health workers and less than 1 percent of the world’s financial resources.
There has been renewed focus on the impact and threat of NCDs since their inclusion in the Sustainable Development Goals. The effort to reduce premature mortality from NCDs by one-third by 2030 is being highlighted in major fora, such as the U.N. High-level Meeting on NCDs.
Achieving universal health coverage by 2030 is a further SDG commitment that is inextricably linked to achieving success in controlling the NCD epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Noncommunicable diseases kill more than 36 million people globally each year. Eighty percent of these deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries, where health systems are largely ill-equipped to deal with the double burden of disease posed by communicable and non-communicable diseases.
JLI opinion piece on NCD’s originally published for Devex on the 16th of October 2018. Read the full piece here