Unchecked, noncommunicable diseases could bill the world $47 trillion

In 2008, the World Health Organization announced that noncommunicable diseases (NCD), such as heart disease and stroke, had overtaken infectious disease, such as diarrhea, HIV and malaria, as the leading causes of death globally (World Health Statistics 2008). The next year the “2008-2013 Action plan for the global strategy for the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases” was published to address four shared risk factors (tobacco use, physical inactivity, unhealthy diets and the harmful use of alcohol) for four noncommunicable diseases: cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancers and chronic respiratory diseases.