Looking back The Danish NCD Alliance The Danish NCD Alliance is an alliance between the Danish Cancer Society and the Danish Diabetes Association. It was founded in 2009 by the Danish Cancer Society, the Danish Diabetes Association and the Danish Heart Foundation. Since its inauguration, the Danish NCD Alliance has initiated and supported NCD Alliances in Uganda (since 2010), Tanzania (since 2011), Zanzibar (since 2013) and East African Community (since 2014). The 3 NCD Alliances in East Africa and the East African NCD Alliance serve as role models globally for engaging patients and people in the fight against NCDs. Civil Society engagement in combatting NCDs are in general very weak in low-income countries. We have supported people in East Africa by giving them a chance to get organised and to develop their organisational capacity and their capacity to advocate and lobby governments, parliaments and media. We have supported them to become strong member associations giving a voice to patients and people concerned about NCDs and to engage in prevention through campaigning, research and screening activities. The outcome is overwhelming. We have demonstrated that people are ready, they want to engage in improving their conditions; they just need a little support. Within the 6 years we have partnered with NCD Alliances in East Africa, they have developed themselves from non-existence to organisations highly respected and legitimate representatives for NCD patients and people concerned about NCDs by governments, Members of Parliaments (national and local), NGOs, media, civil service and academia. • They have recruited between 2000 and 4000 individual members to the member associations in a difficult environment where even a very modest fee is difficult to pay due to poverty. • They have organized branches in broad number of regions in order to create countrywide awareness and support. • They have initiated and participated in developing National NCD strategies by pushing ministries to the table and offering their expertize. • They have initiated and implemented accountability studies and used the data to successfully lobby for more focus on NCDs. • They have created vast public awareness and secured media coverage reaching between 4 and 20 million people. The East African NCD Alliances are the most developed NCD Alliances in Africa with a solid governance structure based on member associations representing individual members, all round activities consisting of advocacy, research, campaigning/mass media on risk factors and disease awareness, screenings, patient support and not least structured organisational capacity development. The outcome is convincing and it is mirrored in policy development in their countries, where tangible examples include development of a cancer register in Zanzibar, National costed action plan for NCDs in Tanzania, establishment of a NCD Unit in Uganda and multi-stakeholder committees for development and coordination of NCD strategies and action plans. The NCD Alliances are represented in the multistakeholder committees. The major weakness of the East African alliances is their dependency of financial support from the Danish NCD Alliance via the Civil Society Fund and their fragile administrative systems and financial management. During 6 years The Danish NCD Alliance has offered funding and technical expertise. In total the Danish NCD Alliance has raised 2.3 million USD (15,031,722 DKK) from the Civil Society Fond and 300.000 USD (2 million DKK) for salary to project manager and offered in-kind support in form of salaries during short-term consultancy assignments to eleven employees from the Danish member associations and office space and equipment to the alliance. 3
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