Addressing the growing burden of non–communicable disease by leveraging lessons from infectious disease management

Deaths due to NCDs in LMICs are expected to increase from 30.8 million in 2015 to 41.8 million by 2030 [1]. While improvements in life expectancy, lifestyle and urbanisation go some way to explaining why more people in LMICs are affected by NCDs, it is less clear why these populations are contracting NCDs at a younger age and with worse outcomes than in high–income countries (HICs) [2]. Despite having a lower cardiovascular disease risk factor burden, LMIC populations have a four–fold higher mortality rate from cardiovascular events than HIC populations [3] in part due to a lack of access to quality, integrated health services and the poor availability of early interventions and effective NCD prevention programmes. The HIV/ AIDS epidemic was the last time the world confronted a global health challenge that so disproportionately caused premature adult deaths in LMICs.