Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO, launched a new report calling on global leaders to take urgent action on noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), responsible for 17 million premature deaths every year.
To accelerate action Dr Tedros renewed the two-year appointment of Michael R. Bloomberg as WHO Global Ambassador for Noncommunicable Diseases and Injuries. This is Bloomberg’s third reappointment as Ambassador, having first been appointed to the role in 2016.
The announcement came at the first annual gathering of a Heads of State and Government Group for the Prevention of NCDs, led by the President of Ghana and the Prime Minister of Norway, held during the 77th Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). This follows the launch of a Global NCD Compact earlier this year by Ghana and Norway.
To mark the occasion, WHO released a new report, “Invisible Numbers: The true scale of noncommunicable diseases,” and a data portal that for the first time, brings together all WHO data related to NCDs for 194 countries. The report and portal highlight the extent of global NCD burden, risk factors, and the progress each country is making in their efforts to combat these diseases and conditions. Every two seconds, someone under 70 somewhere in the world dies of an NCD. Noncommunicable diseases like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and lung disease now outnumber infectious disease as the top killers globally.
