EIT: MHS8.432 Challenges in Addressing Non-Communicable Diseases

This essay explores the significant challenges in addressing non-communicable diseases (NCDs), emphasizing the global impact on morbidity and mortality rates. It identifies key obstacles, including the aging population, which exacerbates NCD prevalence due to cumulative exposure to risk factors. The essay also highlights the critical issue of inadequate access to affordable medications, particularly in low and middle-income countries, forcing patients to rely on out-of-pocket payments. Furthermore, it addresses the challenge of limited data and surveillance systems, which hinders effective monitoring of risk factors, morbidity, mortality, and health system responses. The essay underscores the urgent need to overcome these challenges to reduce the global burden of NCDs and improve public health outcomes.

RUNNING HEAD: CHALLENGES IN ADDRESSING NON-COMMUNICABLE DISEASES 1
Challenges in addressing non-communicable diseases
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CHALLENGES IN ADDRESSING NON-COMMUNICABLE DISEASES 2
Challenges in addressing non-communicable diseases
Non-communicable diseases are a group of infections or conditions that cannot spread
from one person to another. Examples of such diseases include diabetes and hypertension. Since
this diseases contributes to mortality and morbidity rates, there should be efforts both nationally
and globally to prevent and manage them. However, there are different challenges experienced in
the quest to reduce their prevalence. Ageing population is one of the leading challenges in
addressing non-communicable diseases. Ageing is a natural process of advancement in the
number of years and it is proving to be a stumbling block in reducing the prevalence of non-
communicable diseases. Different studies attribute non-communicable diseases to cumulative
exposure to risk factors such as tobacco smoking over a lifetime .This therefore implies that the
larger the proportion of the ageing population, the higher the prevalence of non-communicable
diseases. Since ageing cannot be controlled, it becomes quite difficult to control the non-
communicable diseases.
Inadequate cheap medications for non-communicable diseases contributes to difficulties
in reducing their prevalence. According to an article by Crino et.al there is a global shortage of
cheap drugs that can be used to treat different non-communicable diseases like cardiovascular
diseases (Crino, Sacks, & Wu, 2016). This is a very serious challenge especially in middle and
low-income countries. This has in return forced the patients to use out of pocket payment which
is not conducive to all of them and this has therefore made it difficult to combat the non-
communicable diseases.
Inadequate data or statistics about non-communicable diseases as well as surveillance of
the risk factors is another challenge in the prevention and management of the non-communicable
diseases. One of the studies conducted by Sharma et al., established that optimal monitoring of

CHALLENGES IN ADDRESSING NON-COMMUNICABLE DISEASES 3
the different risk factors, morbidity and mortality of this type of diseases and finally the health
systems responses have not been incorporated into the national health information systems of
different countries (Sharma et al., 2017). The study found out that in some other countries, the
capacity as well as resources that can be used in collecting data and supporting surveillance
systems are generally limited. Non communicable diseases contributes to high mortality and
morbidity rates globally and there should be efforts to overcome those challenges and reduce
both the mortality and mortality rates as a result of non-communicable diseases.

CHALLENGES IN ADDRESSING NON-COMMUNICABLE DISEASES 4
References
Crino, M., Sacks, G., & Wu, J. H. (2016). A Review of Population-Level Actions Targeting
Reductions in Food Portion Sizes to Address Obesity and Related Non-
communicable Diseases. Current Nutrition Reports, 5(4), 323-332.
doi:10.1007/s13668-016-0181-7
Sharma, S. R., Page, R., Matheson, A., Lambrick, D., Faulkner, J., & Mishra, S. R. (2017).
Non-communicable disease prevention in Nepal: systemic challenges and future
directions. Global Health Promotion, 175797591772080.
doi:10.1177/1757975917720800