Abstract
The forthcoming post-Millennium Development Goals era will bring about new challenges in global health. Low- and middle-income countries will have to contend with a dual burden of infectious and non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Some of these NCDs, such as neoplasms, COPD, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, cause much health loss worldwide and are already widely recognised as doing so. However, 55% of the global NCD burden arises from other NCDs, which tend to be ignored in terms of premature mortality and quality of life reduction. Here, experts in some of these ‘forgotten NCDs’ review the clinical impact of these diseases along with the consequences of their ignoring their medical importance, and discuss ways in which they can be given higher global health priority in order to decrease the growing burden of disease and disability.
Highlights
In an era of considerable interest in global health, in part motivated by the Millennium Development Goals, and inspired by demonstrable success with disease control strategies for child survival, donors, countries and the broader global development community are increasingly asking: what’s next? Certainly, the unfinished agenda of substantially reducing the six million child deaths that still occur each year must remain a focus of global health and development efforts
Mortality is rare among children born with sickle cell disease (SCD) in Europe, the USA and the Caribbean where the majority of affected children can expect to live a relatively normal life into their 40s and 50s [15,16,17]. Providing such services is within reach in many resource-limited settings (RLS): successful pilot studies of newborn screening have been conducted in several African countries [18] and, in comparison to diseases of higher priority, the provision of basic care in specialist clinics is not expensive [19]
In the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2010 report, deaths due to diabetes increased by 20%, and due to chronic kidney disease by 15% between 1990 and 2010, so that both rose in the ‘league tables’ of causes of death (15 to 9, and 27 to 18 respectively)
Summary
Though a relatively minor cause of disease burden, is an example of a severely disabling condition that ought, with current knowledge, be better managed and more readily preventable, as detailed in the article by Singh This reminds us that, unlike the acute, and largely treatable nature of communicable diseases, NCDs are complex, diverse, and manifest their impact on population health in different ways. Mortality is rare among children born with SCD in Europe, the USA and the Caribbean where the majority of affected children can expect to live a relatively normal life into their 40s and 50s [15,16,17] Providing such services is within reach in many RLS: successful pilot studies of newborn screening have been conducted in several African countries [18] and, in comparison to diseases of higher priority (such as HIV, TB and malaria), the provision of basic care in specialist clinics is not expensive [19]. Better data will lead to better advocacy for SCD at every level: from education in schools and colleges, through to groups of affected patients, the media, celebrities, politicians, funders and health agencies internationally
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