In a comment  published in The Lancet Oncology, global cancer leaders are calling for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) to be included in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as a matter of urgency, to prevent millions of unnecessary deaths. Waiting until 2015 when the MDGs expire and successor goals are implemented will be too late. It is, they say, imperative that member states include NCDs in the current MDGs in their review of the goals at the MDG Summit in New York this week.

According to the heads of the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), Lance Armstrong Foundation (LiveSTRONG), International Network for Cancer Treatment and Research (INCTR), and the American Cancer Society (ACS), there has been a global neglect of the cancer epidemic in low and middle income countries and more needs to be done urgently: “Given that NCDs have become a significant health issue, with 80% of the current burden in countries of low and middle income and trends predicting a 17% increase in global NCD deaths over the next 10 years, no one can argue that NCDs are not also a serious development issue.”

Despite being responsible for 35 million (60%) deaths worldwide (9 million of which are premature and potentially avoidable), NCDs are not explicitly included in the MDGs and there are no indictors that relate directly to these diseases. This, say the authors, results in a distorted allocation of overseas development aid, with less than 2% going to NCDs in developing countries, “where help hinges on the lead being given by the MDGs.”

A high-level meeting of the UN General Assembly scheduled for September 2011 will discuss the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases. At this summit, the authors are calling on heads of state and governments to issue an outcomes statement which will detail the specific actions they need to take to tackle NCDs and strengthen health systems, together with a set of indictors against which progress can be measured.

In particular, they would like to see all countries develop and implement national NCD action plans to address the prevention, management, treatment, and research of NCDs with the provision of sufficient resources. They are also calling for the full implementation of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).

Moreover, the authors recognise that in order to meet the challenges of NCDs in the developing world and to galvanise financial and political support, NCD management must be built into future global targets, and above all the MDGs and their successor goals in 2015.

They conclude by calling for a concerted global effort to reduce the burden of NCDs: “The September, 2011, UN high-level meeting will be only the second of its kind to focus on a global disease issue. The results from the HIV/AIDS meeting in 2001 give us cause to be optimistic that governments will give greater priority to cancer and the other NCDs after September, 2011. Since NCDs are now being considered as an MDG agenda issue, we can also assume that more overseas development aid will be earmarked to address cancer and the other NCDs in developing countries.”

Source: Lancet Oncology