Amsterdam, 5 September 2022 – This week is the Global week for action on non-communicable diseases (NCDs)! This campaign is an initiative of the NCD Alliance and was first organised in 2018, ahead of the UN High-Level Meeting on NCDs. The campaign focuses on the biggest gaps to progress on NCDs being accountability, investment, leadership, community engagement and care.

Invest to protect

Currently, only 1-2% of total development assistance for health is dedicated to NCDs. NCDs remain one of the most underfunded global health issues relative to the billions of people impacted. Pushing millions of people into extreme poverty every year as out-of-pocket costs of NCD treatment are extremely high. This also means that people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are hit disproportionately hard, we notice that for example when we look at the annual number of deaths related to cancer. It is estimated that 70% of all cancer-related deaths occur in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America (WHO, 2020).

IDA's Vision and approach

The past years we have been expanding our NCD portfolio drastically as we noticed increased demand for a variety of treatments such as antidiabetic agents, anticoagulants, and chemotherapy medicines among others. In early 2021, IDA Foundation expanded its oncology portfolio to address this problem and to create access to affordable quality cancer treatment in LMICs.

Through a new partnership with Defeat NCD (DNCD), IDA is dedicated to bridge the gap in access to essential medicines to treat the most common NCDs, especially now they are strongly on the rise in LMICs. DNCD’s mission to 'enable and assist lower-income and lesser developed countries to scale-up sustained action against NCDs so that they can progress on SDG3', is closely related to our own mission and we believe that we can enhance each other’s impact in LMICs in the future.