Happy New Year! To kick off 2011, we are highlighting some recent news stories on diabetes and the enormous worldwide burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). In the run-up to September’s UN Summit on NCDs, we are working to raise the profile of these important issues, and encourage the world’s leaders to make a strong commitment and serious investment in fighting diseases like diabetes, cancer and heart disease.
At the start of 2011, it is heartening to see NCDs and new campaigns much in the news around the world.
In an important essay on CNN.com, CEOs John Seffrin of the American Cancer Society and Doug Ullman of the Lance Armstrong Foundation write about the critically important opportunity presented by the upcoming UN Summit on NCDs. They ask the U.S. government to take a leadership role and “support a two-day meeting to allow meaningful dialogue, planning, commitment and action.”
Also, the American Heart Association announced today that it is participating in an international partnership, through the NCD Alliance, to prepare for the summit to make the most of this incredible opportunity to ensure that the fight against NCDs is a top priority in the global health agenda.
A geographical area of interest to Arogya World is the Indian subcontinent, and here are two recent news stories from the region.
In The International News, author Muhammad Qasim notes that Pakistan “needs to work out an extraordinary strategy for the challenges ahead in 2011, as it continued to witness double burden of diseases, the infectious diseases and non-communicable diseases, in 2010.”
Another new article discussed the challenges to providing comprehensive primary care in India. The author suggests that there are ample healthcare resources in India, but that a lack of well-organized national health programs are the main impediment to quality care. The author notes that “While there is suitable governance for many rural activities such as land revenue and finance, security, electricity and telecommunications there are almost non-existent activities in disease prevention… We predict that this situation shall get worse as there is no focus on chronic diseases which are already an important problem in Indian rural areas.”