The UN General Assembly has decided to hold a UN High-Level Meeting on Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs). The Summit focused on the four most prominent non-communicable diseases, namely, cancers, cardiovascular diseases, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes. The aim of the summit was to agree on a global strategy to address NCDs.

The UN High-Level Meeting on NCDs was the second of its kind to focus on a global disease issue. The first UN Summit related to health was the HIV/AIDS meeting in 2001 which led to the creation of the Global Fund.

Non-communicable disease indicators were on the agenda for discussion during the Millennium Development Goals Review Session, 20-22 September 2011 in New York. Acceptance would lead to the future earmarking of overseas development aid to address cancer and other NCDs in developing countries.

ESMO actively supports the UN High-Level Meeting on NCDs through the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC). The UICC is one of the 4 founding members of an initiative called the Non-Communicable Diseases Alliance (NCDA). Within the Alliance, UICC is the lead organization representing cancer.

ESMO has been proactive at the EU level. As a member of the European Chronic Disease Alliance and the Rare Cancers Europe initiative, ESMO petitioned the European Union and all European countries to strongly support the UN High-Level Meeting on NCDs. Through the ESMO Cancer Patient Working Group, patient advocates and professionals sent a letter to EU Commissioner Barroso, Members of the European Parliament and EU Ministries of Health.

In April, the WHO and the Russian Government organized the WHO Global Forum and the Russian Ministerial meeting, resulting in the Moscow Declaration. Shortly afterwards the WHO released the 2010 WHO Global Status Report on NCDs.

The 2011 World Health Assembly held in May 2011 issued a declaration noting that NCDs pose one of the greatest challenges to health and development, contributing to more than 60% of deaths worldwide
 
An NCD Alliance Goal and Priority Targets document identifies the main issues that civil society and NGO’s a lobbied to include in the final UN Outcomes Statement.

Continue to be informed and be heard. Lobby for your country’s support to implement the final UN Political Declaration. The Declaration's major achievements specific to cancer are:

• Give greater priority to early detection, screening and diagnosis of NCDs including cancer screening programmes (particularly breast and cervical cancer)
• Increase access to Hepatitis B and HPV vaccines as part of national immunization programmes to prevent infection-related cancers

ESMO President David Kerr leads ESMO’s efforts for the UN High-level meeting and post-meeting activities including participation in:

1. WHO-Europe: Consultation on the Action plan for Implementation of the European Strategy for the Prevention and Control of Non-communicable Diseases (2011–2016), 17-18 March 2011, Copenhagen
2. WHO Global Forum: Addressing the Challenge of Non-communicable Diseases, 27 April 2011, where David Kerr chaired the session on Health Professionals and Health Services. This meeting was a pre-meeting to the First Global Ministerial Conference on Healthy Lifestyles and Noncommunicable Disease Control Moscow, 28-29 April 2011, which published the Moscow Declaration.
3. Informal Interactive Hearing on Non-communicable Diseases, 16 June 2011, at the UN in New York.
4. High-level meeting of the UN General Assembly on the prevention and control of Non-communicable Diseases, 19-20 September 2011, in New York.
5. Harvard Global Equity Initiative, 27-28 October 2011, in Boston.
6. UICC World Cancer Leaders Summit, 17-18 November 2011, in Dublin.

ESMO members received international recognition for UN High-Level Meeting support. Eduardo Cazap, ESMO member and President of the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) was elected Co-Chair of the UN Civil Society Task Force. Istvan Lang, ESMO National Representative for Hungary, secured support of the UN Summit from EU Ministries of Health through a letter organized by the Hungarian EU Presidency to EU Health Commissioner John Dalli.

ESMO members, committees and initiatives have been proactively supporting ESMO’s efforts at the highest political levels. International collaboration has resulted in a European Parliament Resolution which among other things calls for:

• EU and its Member States actively to implement the Political Declaration to be issued following the high-level meeting, involving all relevant EU agencies and institutions in order to address NCD-related challenges
• Clear protocols and evidence-based guidelines to be established for the most common NCDs in order to ensure appropriate patient management and treatment across healthcare professions, including specialists, primary-care physicians and specialist nurses
• Asks the Commission to consider and assess the possibility of extending the remit of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) to encompass NCDs and using it as a centre for data collection and recommendation development on NCDs, thus providing policy-makers, scientists and doctors with details of best practices and greater knowledge on NCDs
• Calls for a comprehensive review of the implementation of the UN Political Declaration by 2014

Colleagues around the world are joining our efforts and publicly supporting a global commitment to reduce the burden of NCDs. Read the Asian Cancer Forum Declaration launched at the Japanese Society for Clinical Oncology Congress on 29 October 2011.

For more information about what you, your institute, organization or society can do, please visit the NCD Alliance website, consult the WHO Chronic Disease Advocacy Guide and sign the World Cancer Declaration.