Chronic respiratory diseases global mortality trends, treatment guidelines, life style modifications, and air pollution: preliminary analysis

WHO: lessons learnt on noncommunicable disease (NCD) controlBillions of people around the world are affected by NCDs, which comprised 71% of global mortality (41 million) of the 57 million deaths which occurred globally.NCD burden is greatest within low-and middleincome countries (LMIC), where 78% of all NCD deaths and 85% of premature deaths were registered.Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) (31%), cancers (16%), chronic respiratory diseases (CRDs) (7%), and diabetes (3%) these four diseases are largely preventable through public policies that tackle their common risk factors: tobacco use, harmful use of alcohol, unhealthy diets, physical inactivity and air pollution (1).In the year 2000 foreseeing this situation and taking into account enormous burden of NCD, the 53 World Health Assembly (WHA) gave priority to prevention and control of NCD with special emphasis on developing countries and other deprived populations (WHA resolution 53.17 May 2000) and a lot of activities and programmes have been initiated mainly by the health sectors to globally address this problem.The Moscow Declaration adopted during the First Global Ministerial Conference on Healthy Lifestyles and NCD Control (Moscow, 28-29 April 2011), underlined that besides health sector many sectors of the society, including finance, trade, agriculture, education and environment, have an impact on risk factors for NCD, and that the responsibility for the NCD agenda can no longer be delegated solely to ministries of health and requires a multisectoral approach (2).In September 2011, at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, recognizing that NCD constitute one of the major challenges for development in the 21 century, a political declaration was made to strengthen global and national responses to prevent and control NCD (3).Presidents and Prime-Ministers committed to "strengthen their commitment, as Heads of State and Government, to provide strategic leadership for the prevention and treatment of NCD".As part of the declaration, WHO was given a leadership role, and subsequently established the WHO Global NCD Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of NCD 2013-2020 adopted by the WHA in 2013 (4,5).The Global NCD Action Plan included nine voluntary global targets to be attained by 2025 (4) and global monitoring framework.These targets include 25% relative reduction in risk of premature mortality from major NCD, at least 10% relative reduction in the harmful use of alcohol, a 10% relative reduction in prevalence of insufficient physical activity, a 30% relative reduction in mean population intake of salt/sodium, a 30% reduction in prevalence of current tobacco use, a 25% relative reduction in the prevalence of raised blood pressure, halt the rise in diabetes and obesity, 50% drug therapy coverage and counseling to prevent heart attacks and strokes and 80% availability of basic technologies and essential medicines.