Non-Communicable Diseases and Global Health Politics

Author(s):  
Roger Magnusson

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases, and diabetes, are responsible for around 70 percent of global deaths each year. This chapter describes how NCDs have become prevalent and critically evaluates global efforts to address NCDs and their risk factors, with a particular focus on the World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations (UN) system. It explores the factors that have prevented those addressing NCDs from achieving access to resources and a priority commensurate with their impact on people’s lives. The chapter evaluates the global response to NCDs both prior to and since the UN High-Level Meeting on Prevention and Control of Non-communicable Diseases, held in 2011, and considers opportunities for strengthening that response in future.

2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (13) ◽  
Author(s):  
M Domeika ◽  
G Kligys ◽  
O Ivanauskiene ◽  
J Mereckiene ◽  
V Bakasenas ◽  
...  

Electronic reporting systems improve the quality and timeliness of the surveillance of communicable diseases. The aim of this paper is to present the process of the implementation and introduction of an electronic reporting system for the surveillance of communicable diseases in Lithuania. The project which started in 2002 was performed in collaboration between Lithuania and Sweden and was facilitated by the parallel process of adapting the surveillance system to European Union (EU) standards. The Lotus-based software, SmittAdm, was acquired from the Department of Communicable Diseases Control and Prevention of Stockholm County in Sweden and adopted for Lithuania, resulting in the Lithuanian software, ULISAS. A major advantage of this program for Lithuania was the possibility to work offline. The project was initiated in the two largest counties in Lithuania where ULISAS had been installed and put in use by January 2005. The introduction was gradual, the national level was connected to the system during late 2005, and all remaining counties were included during 2006 and 2007. The reporting system remains to be evaluated concerning timeliness and completeness of the surveillance. Further development is needed, for example the inclusion of all physicians and laboratories and an alert system for outbreaks. The introduction of this case-based, timely electronic reporting system in Lithuania allows better reporting of data to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) compared to the former reporting system with paper-based, aggregated data.


Author(s):  
E V Lambert

Chronic, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) account for more than two-thirds of global mortality, at least 50% of which is preventable on the basis of modifiable lifestyle behaviours. In the wake of the UN Global Summit on NCDs, the World Health Organization produced a discussion paper that emphasised the need for a global monitoring framework and voluntary global targets for the prevention and control of NCDs.1 The WHO discussion paper presents 10 suggested voluntary targets including the reduction in deaths due to NCDs, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, an overall reduction in blood pressure and obesity, as well as reduced smoking, alcohol and dietary salt intake, increased screening for cervical cancer and the elimination of trans-fats from the food supply. Physical activity is notable by its absence from this critical list of voluntary global targets for preventing and controlling NCDs


2017 ◽  
Vol 87 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruno Balbi ◽  
Claudio Marcassa ◽  
Fabrizio Pisani ◽  
Giacomo Corica ◽  
Antonio Spanevello

Chronic degenerative non-communicable diseases affecting different organs and systems are considered by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the emergent epidemic in the third millennium...


Nutrients ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 429
Author(s):  
Greta Caprara

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) (mainly cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases and type 2 diabetes) are the main causes of death worldwide. Their burden is expected to rise in the future, especially in less developed economies and among the poor spread across middle- and high-income countries. Indeed, the treatment and prevention of these pathologies constitute a crucial challenge for public health. The major non-communicable diseases share four modifiable behavioral risk factors: unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, tobacco usage and excess of alcohol consumption. Therefore, the adoption of healthy lifestyles, which include not excessive alcohol intake, no smoking, a healthy diet and regular physical activity, represents a crucial and economical strategy to counteract the global NCDs burden. This review summarizes the latest evidence demonstrating that Mediterranean-type dietary pattern and physical activity are, alone and in combination, key interventions to both prevent and control the rise of NCDs.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masoumeh Nomani ◽  
Mohammad Varahram ◽  
Payam Tabarsi ◽  
Seyed MohamadReza Hashemian ◽  
Hamidreza Jamaati ◽  
...  

Abstract A new coronavirus disease was described in December 2019 (COVID-19) in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China and has reached pandemic status. According to the World Health Organization, the incubation time from being infected to symptom emergence averages 5-6 days for COVID-19 but can be up to 14 days. The mortality rate varies in different countries but is greater in elderly people and in patients with cardiovascular disease, diabetes and chronic respiratory diseases. Patients with chronic respiratory diseases often have reduced neutrophil function. We sought to measure neutrophil phagocytosis and bacterial killing in COVID-19 patients. 30 COVID-19 patients and 9 healthy individuals were recruited from the Masih Daneshvari Hospital (Tehran, Iran) from March-May 2020. Polymorphonuclear (PMN) cells were isolated from whole fresh blood and incubated with green fluorescent protein (GFP) labelled methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Phagocytosis was determined by measuring the florescence of co-cultures of bacteria and neutrophils and reported as the lag time before exponential growth. The number of viable bacteria was determined after 70 h by the Colony-Forming Unit (CFU). Bacterial phagocytosis of SA (22±0.9 versus 9.2±0.5h, p<0.01) and PA (12.4±0.6 versus 4.5±0.22, p<0.01) was significantly reduced in COVID-19 patients compared with healthy control subjects. After 70h there was a significant increase in CFU in COVID-19 subjects compared with healthy control subjects for both SA (2.6±0.09 x 108 versus 0.8±0.04 x 108 CFU/ml, p<0.001) and PA (2.2±0.09 x 109 versus 1.0±0.06 x 109 CFU/ml, p<0.001).These results suggests a defect in bacterial clearance by neutrophils in COVID-19 patients.


Author(s):  
Ye Yao ◽  
Jinhua Pan ◽  
Zhixi Liu ◽  
Xia Meng ◽  
Weidong Wang ◽  
...  

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic, which was first reported in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, has caused 219,331 confirmed cases as of 20 March 2020, with 81,301 cases being reported in China. It has been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization in 11 March 2020 (1). Although massive intervention measures have been implemented in China (e.g. shutting down cities, extending holidays and travel ban) and many other countries, the spread of the disease are unlikely to be stopped over the world shortly. It is becoming evident that environmental factors are associated with seasonality of respiratory-borne diseases’ epidemics (2). Previous studies have suggested that ambient nitrogen dioxide (NO2) exposure may play a role in the phenotypes of respiratory diseases, including, but not limited to, influenza, asthma and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). NO2), for example, might increase the susceptibility of adults to virus infections (3). High exposure to NO2 before the start of a respiratory viral infection is associated with the severity of asthma exacerbation (4). This study aims to assess the associations of ambient NO2 levels with spread ability of COVID-19 across 63 Chinese cities, and provides information for the further prevention and control of COVID-19.


Author(s):  
Henrique Damasceno Vianna ◽  
Fábio Pittoli ◽  
Emerson Butzen Marques ◽  
Jorge Luis Victoria Barbosa

According to World Health Organization, the treatment of non-communicable diseases needs more than patient engagement to help control the diseases. Community and health organizations support is also desirable for controlling them. This work details the UDuctor middleware, which was designed for supporting ubiquitous non-communicable disease care, and so, helping the integration between patient and community resources. The UDuctor middleware gives a step forward in relation to other architectures for ubiquitous applications by integrating patients, community resources and community members through a peer-to-peer network. Each peer runs a RESTFul based middleware, which enables messaging, resource sharing, context subscription and notification, and location between other UDuctor peers. The middleware implementation was employed in two solutions and tested in three experiments. The results are promising and show feasibility for the application of the middleware in real life situations.


Author(s):  
Ronald Labonté ◽  
Arne Ruckert

Notwithstanding the threat of infectious pandemics, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are now the leading cause of preventable mortality and morbidity in all regions of the world except Africa. The rise in NCDs, especially in the developing world, is very much a result of global market integration, trade and investment liberalization, and the growth in the reach and power of transnational corporations whose stock-in-trade are health-harmful commodities (tobacco, alcohol, and obesogenic foods). The modern global governance challenge of what are now referred to as the ‘commercial determinants of health’ is the extent to which such commodities are regulated by governments, passed over to corporate social (self-) responsibility, or seen as an amalgam of the poor lifestyles of individuals in need of a behavioural ‘nudge’. The World Health Organization, the lead international organization developing responses to the NCD threat, must confront powerful member nations representing powerful corporate interests resistant to regulatory change.


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