Newly released World Health Organization (WHO) guidance on integrating the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases in HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and sexual and reproductive health programmes guidance will help policymakers, programme managers and health providers to maximise the impact of health services, extend access to noncommunicable diseases (NCD)care, and scale up.
This implementation guidance is designed to guide a paradigm shift in health systems tomaximise the impact of health services and extend access to NCD care. This comprises a change from addressing NCDs and other diseases vertically to addressing them in an integrated manner, from a clinical to a clinical and public health approach, guided by the principles of universal access and social justice.
The guidance highlights 18 recommended strategic actions, in five domains: people and community, policy and leadership, financing, capacity and infrastructure, model of care for NCDs.
To gear towards the implementation, the guidance addresses factors in the complex settings, such as the nature of NCD service integration, social determinants of NCDs and multimorbidity, differences in integration by geographical setting and income level, tailoring of guidance to national and local contexts, and monitoring, evaluation, and implementation research.
WHO is continuing working with collaborators and partners, such as The Global Fund, to support the Member States transforming health services from siloed interventions to integrated, people-centred care.
The guidance calls upon international partners, including donors and banks, to champion integrated and NCD inclusive support for service delivery and better service management in countries. “I urge international donors and partners to support the integration of NCDs into health programmes. This would reverse the growing burden of NCDs, while sustaining the gains of other health programmes,” said Dr Zsuzsanna Jakab, Deputy Director-General at WHO. “It is time to stop the millions of needless deaths.”
