16.05.2017
Silent killers: the scourge of noncommunicable diseases in Africa

PLOS BLOGS "When global health leaders gather in Geneva this month to elect a new head of the World Health Organization, President Trump’s shadow will hang over the conclave. His “America First” agenda is a repudiation of the global consensus that has made the WHO effective at improving quality of life around the globe. Thus, the new director-general can expect to confront an ever growing list of threats with a smaller toolset. That would portend poorly for the fight against the most urgent health crisis facing Africa today: the rise of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). (by Kofi Gunu)

The NCD epidemic in Africa is of an intensely personal interest to me. Growing up in Ghana, I contracted not only the usual childhood illnesses but managed to survive frequent bouts of cholera and malaria. Joining a U.S.-based non-profit operating primary health facilities in my home country as a young adult, I anticipated dealing exclusively with the tropical infections that plagued my childhood. To my surprise, nearly half of our patients were diagnosed with ailments one is more likely to find in a doctor’s office in suburban America: diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and chronic respiratory illness. These NCDs, not the “third world” maladies more commonly associated with Africa, now threaten to derail progress on the continent." (Photo: World Diabetes Day awareness campaign, 22 Nov 2012/GovernmentZA/flickr, CC BY-ND 2.0)