This post originally appeared on Armchair Advocates. By Nikhil D.Patil, Arogya World Fellow Two weeks ago, New York was the place to be. While world leaders headed to the U.N. General Assembly and development experts and social entrepreneurs attended the Clinton Global Initiative, I and my fellow social media techies tweeted, Facebooked, Instagramed and YouTubed [...]

Arogya World’s low-budget, high-impact strategy for marking the anniversary of the UN High Level Meeting on NCDs.

This piece was submitted as a supplement to our ongoing op-ed series. We’re delighted to share it here. By Gloria Sangiwa, MD Chronic diseases — notably cancers, cardiovascular diseases, chronic lung diseases, and diabetes — now account for nearly 35 million deaths annually. The human and economic burden of chronic diseases are staggering,especially in developing countries. [...]

Here in Uganda, health professionals have been leading from the frontlines and working tirelessly to improve the lives of those affected by NCDs. The UN Summit was a historical event and we know change will not come overnight, but we cannot wait any longer to take action. Now is the time to use the momentum from the Summit to focus on country action and scale up successful programmes. We invite you to join us and help make Uganda and other countries the next success story in the fight against NCDs.

By 2030, non-communicable diseases will cause five times as many deaths as HIV/AIDS, TB, and Malaria COMBINED. With numbers so staggering how could I not have known? But learning what NCDs are was only the beginning of my journey. As a communications intern for Arogya World, I began to delve into the research trying to piece together the implications of NCDs. And what I learned is troublesome.