only one person and only two out of four obvious NCD associations have committed to support the initiative. With the adoption of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, the global community has created an agenda that binds all nations together in a common agenda for a better world. This global interconnected agenda will also provide a basis for improvement of health for the Danish population, and hence strengthening the global capacity will be of benefit for people in Denmark. This provides an opportunity to integrate the development agenda with the national agenda. Context NCDs have earned massive global attention due to their devastating influence on people and societies. The global NCD Alliance has successfully spearheaded advocacy for a global NCD initiative. In 2011 UN agreed about the Political Declaration on Prevention and Control of NCDs. This created a remarkable momentum and was followed up by the Global Action Plan on Prevention and Control of NCDs in 2013 and the UN High-level Review meeting in 2014, where the member states agreed about time bound concrete initiatives for the member states containing developing national multi sector NCD plans and establishing multi sector steering committees to oversee the implementation which should start in 2016. In 2015 NCDs were adopted in the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals under goal 3: “Ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all ages.” This is specified in target 3.4: “By 2030, reduce by one third premature mortality from NCDs through prevention and treatment and promote mental health and well-being.” This is supported by other goals about universal health coverage and financial risk protection, alcohol, road safety, air pollution, tobacco referring to FCTC, research, vaccine development, use of TRIPS, health finance and retention of qualified staff and early detection. The NCD specific targets can only be reached by an integrated multi sector effort. Therefore a majority of the 17 overarching goals are relevant for combatting NCDs. The endorsement of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals was followed by a financing meeting in Addis Ababa 2015. Donor commitment was disappointingly low. The implementation of 2030 Sustainable Development Goals are by and large supposed to be financed by strengthened national resource mobilisation from tax and other sources. Importantly, it was agreed to recommend to increase taxes and levy on tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy food like sugar. National implementation of the WHO action plan and the time-bound commitments from the 2011 and 2014 High-level meetings have been disappointingly weak. Nearly three-quarters of all countries have showed very poor or no progress in 2015 towards achieving the implementation of their time-bound commitments. And the current rate of decline in premature deaths from NCDs is insufficient to meet target 3.4 of the Sustainable Development Goals to reduce by one third premature mortality from NCDs by 2030. This poses a particular challenge to low- and middleincome countries, where premature deaths strike hardest, and among populations already vulnerable due to lack of equitable economic, social, and environmental development trends. The governments in our partner countries are no exception from the trend highlighted above. The NCD Alliances have promoted some results like development of costed NCD plans, establishment of multi sector NCD committees, but we have still to see this followed by concrete plans and budgets allocated in the fiscal laws. The Danish political situation is characterized by broad political support to promote NCDs at global level. But there are no intensions of specific development aid to support targeted development aid for NCDs. In general Danish development health programs have been phased out. The best opportunity for increased Danish engagement is to work with Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other stakeholders for innovative solutions created through collaboration between civil society, private sector, academia and public sector bodies. 5
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