WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday that the COVID-19 pandemic had signaled the need to address non-communicable diseases (NCD) worldwide, as people with such noninfectious health conditions were more vulnerable to the coronavirus infection
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 04th September, 2020) WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday that the COVID-19 pandemic had signaled the need to address non-communicable diseases (NCD) worldwide, as people with such noninfectious health conditions were more vulnerable to the coronavirus infection.
"The pandemic has underscored the urgency of addressing NCDs and their risk factors. ... Because people with NCDs are at high risk of severe COVID-19, finding effective therapeutics for these patients is a high priority," Tedros said in a briefing.
The WHO chief also said he had launched a set of publications together with the UN NCD Inter-Agency Task Force that calls for urgent action on NCDs.
"First, we call for the voices of people living with NCDs to be heard in all discussions about policies that directly affect them. Second, we call for global financing instruments to be extended to low-income countries that request support for NCDs," Tedros added.
Non-communicable diseases, which include cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes, strokes and other non-transmissible chronic conditions, account for almost 70 percent of all deaths worldwide, according to the WHO findings.
The UN health agency declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11. As of Friday, more than 26 million cases have been confirmed globally, including 865,154 deaths.
