This is a guest post from Wendy Johnson, a physician at the University of Washington with extensive experience working health issues in low-resource communities in Africa.
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Wendy Johnson
The UN High-level Meeting on Non-communicable Diseases (NCDs) couldn’t come at a worse time.
While the delegates, disease experts and functionaries gather in New York to discuss how to create a more comprehensive global health agenda, political leaders in a smaller city to the south with much more power to set that agenda will likely be dismantling the infrastructure and funding needed to support the fundamental change needed – health systems improvement.
As this story from Reuter’s notes, all foreign aid, and especially the USAID budget, is under serious threat, both from the so-called “super-committee” on debt and the deliberations over current spending bills taking place in Washington D.C. According to the article, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Kay Granger is a proponent of deep cuts in aid who believes in limited programs that demonstrate quick impact and further U.S. national security.
This does not bode well for those at the UN meeting who will be arguing that the U.S. and other rich countries should make the long-term commitments necessary to address the disparities in NCDs such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer treatment in poor and middle-income countries. Continue reading
