Inter-Agency Task Force Award

India’s health ministry has received the prestigious UN Inter-Agency Task Force Award for “outstand­ing contribution to the achievement of NCD (Non-Communicable Diseases) related SDG targets.

At the same time, a Lancet paper by the monitoring group, NCD Countdown 2030, contended that India will fall short of the NCD targets pertaining to SDGS. NCDs are the leading cause of mortality, globally and in India, and are dominated by cardiovascular diseases, cancers, diabetes and chronic respiratory diseases. So what is true?

The target set for all countries is to achieve one-third reduction in NCD related mortality between the ages of 30 and 70 by 2030, relative to 2015. The Lancet study reports that high income countries and several upper middle income countries are on course to achieve this target. Lower middle income countries, like India, will need to accelerate the rate of decline to reach the target. Many low income countries are unlikely to reach the target by 2030.