Strengthening Health Systems to Address New Challenge Diseases (NCDs)

Abstract

In the realms of social and economic development, low- and middle-income countries differ in many ways. Yet in the realm of health, they share an emerging challenge: the compound burden of increasingly prevalent chronic and noncommunicable diseases, combined with a backlog of disease and illness associated with “underdevelopment” and typically related to preventable infections.

As the backlog recedes in the face of progress in public health and medicine, the relative burden of chronic and noncommunicable disease increases. Although the epidemiological landscape varies among countries, it is universally true that it will be increasingly defined by aging populations and by what have previously been called “noncommunicable diseases,” or NCDs — but which we believe should be called New Challenge Diseases, with the same acronym.

Keywords: Health systems, NCDs, developing countries