The Defeat-NCD Partnership helps low-resource countries to tackle today’s most significant global health challenge: premature death, sickness, disability, and the associated social and economic impacts from non-communicable diseases.
The World Health Organization (WHO), which sets the norms and standards around NCDs, has said that these diseases were the cause of 70% of deaths in 2015 and that number is likely to rise. Approximately 48% of deaths of people under the age of 70 in 2015 in low- and middle-income countries were attributed to NCDs . The WHO also estimates that between 2008 and 2030, NCDs will cost low- and middle-income countries about US $21 trillion due to illness and lost production. These statistics, though mind numbing, are only the beginning as many of these diseases are treatable and the complications or premature deaths they are causing are completely avoidable.