In collaboration with the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India, WHO Country Office for India organized a consultation on 22-23 May 2014 at New Delhi to develop a National Multisectoral Action Plan for prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs).
Highlighting that the consultation would enhance the national response to NCDs and comorbidities, Dr Nata Menabde, WHO Representative to India said, “The World Health Assembly Resolution 66.10 recognized that actions to prevent and control NCDs fundamentally require contributions from a large range of sectors beyond health, or in other words a multisectoral response.”
“There is a need to develop national multisectoral framework inclusive of mechanisms for planning, guiding, monitoring and evaluating enactment of multisectoral policies and their impacts on NCDs, as well as analyzing the impact of NCDs on different government sectors,” she added.
Mr Lov Verma, Secretary, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India addressed the consultation. Other speakers at the forum included Mr C . K. Mishra, Additional Secretary(Health), MoHFW; Mr Anshu Prakash, Joint Secretary, MoHFW; Shri Manoj Jhalani, Joint Secretary, MoHFW; Dr Mohammad Shaukat, Deputy Director General, MoHFW and Dr Damodar Bachani, Deputy Commissioner, MoHFW.
It was the landmark United Nations High-level Meeting (UNHLM) on prevention and control of NCDs in 2011 that mandated a comprehensive response to combat this increasing burden. This resulted in the development of the WHO Global Action Plan and Monitoring Framework for prevention and control of NCDs (WHA resolution 66.10). Following this endorsement, India became the first country globally to develop a National Monitoring Framework and define targets and indicators as per country perspective.
In order to roll-out this framework, a national consultation was organized in 2013 in pursuance of efforts to develop a national monitoring framework and define the targets and indicators in alignment with the global and WHO South-East Asia Regional monitoring framework for the prevention and control of NCDs. Subsequently, three subnational consultations were also organized during the year.
Strategies identified at these deliberations were endorsed by the National Steering Committee for NCD surveillance and monitoring in January 2014. Four thematic areas emerged from these strategies: multisectoral approach; health systems strengthening; health promotion and advocacy; monitoring and evaluation.
This consultation was a pioneering effort in bringing together officials from national (including ministries other than health) and subnational levels, research institutes, academia, civil society, media and development partners on one platform to define the roles of various stakeholders and discuss the next steps in implementing the action plan for prevention and control of NCDs. The consultation was able to outline activities, appropriate stakeholders and timelines under each of the above mentioned thematic areas to support the implementation of these endorsed strategies.