A world report in this week's issue of The Lancet looks at the upcoming 4th UN High-Level Meeting on non-communicable diseases in New York (NY, USA) on Sept 25, 2025.
CITATION: Volume 406, Issue 10508 p1076-1077September 13, 2025
Concerns over global NCD negotiations
Faith McLellan
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)01855-0/fulltext
'The global challenge HLM4 must address is the failure to make substantial progress towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal 3.4: to reduce premature mortality from NCDs by a third through prevention and treatment and to promote mental health and wellbeing by 2030... Taxation on health-harming products such as tobacco, alcohol, and sugar-sweetened beverages is known to be an effective, evidence-based intervention. However, the appetite for a clear recommendation appears to have waned, alleged to be a result of pressure by industry and some member states, and has been replaced by non-binding soft commitments that taxation might be instead “considered”...
'Prof Cherian Varghese, Director of the Prasanna School of Public Health (Karnataka, India) [says] “One of our main challenges in NCDs is saying that everything needs to be done... We have ‘best buys’ and ‘quick buys’ — my question is, what can I buy? What can I buy as country X or country Y?” When he was in the WHO South-East Asia Regional Office, Varghese proposed to India an initiative to place 25 million people with hypertension on treatment. The Government raised the target to 75 million people on treatment by 2025, included it in their budget, and promoted it heavily. This national effort was then converted into a regional initiative, SEAHEARTS, with a new target of 100 million people, which is the largest expansion of cardiovascular disease control in the world...'
Any scaling up of prevention and treatment of NCDs must be accompanied by inmproving the availability and use of reliable healthcare information. A person's knowledge of their blood pressure is a good example, and I would be very interested to learn more about SEAHEARTS. It is also important to ensure that health workers are supported with relevant, reliable information. On our page 'Why HIFA is needed' we note a study in Pakistan that found '4 in 10 family doctors in Pakistan prescribed tranquilisers as first-line treatment for hypertension'. However, this study is 20 years old and it would be helpful to have more recent data. If anyone is interested to do a little desk research on this, we'd be grateful.
A few days ago C3 Collaborating for Health (a HIFA supporting organisation) held a webinar with Dr Yoseph Mamo (Ethiopia) who has championed the Practical Approach to Care Kit (PACK) in Ethiopia [ https://www.hifa.org/dgroups-rss/global-seminar-series-decentralising-nc... ]. HIFA steering group member Joseph Ana has overseen PACK in Nigeria https://www.hri-global.org/pack.html . Can this be categorised as a 'best buy' for reducing the burden of NCDs?
Best wishes, Neil
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org