Invest to Protect: Investing in Health Today to Save Lives and Money Tomorrow

• admin
• 06 Comment

Invest to Protect: Investing in Health Today to Save Lives and Money Tomorrow

In this year's Global Week of Action on NCDs (5-11 September 2022), Rwanda NCD Alliance joined the global health community to support NCD Alliance in calling for governments, donors, international agencies, and the private sector to invest in NCDs to ensure that prevention and management get the attention and action they deserve, everywhere, for everyone, to save lives and money tomorrow. 

On September 7, 2022, we hosted a Webinar that convened youth, people living with NCDs, NCD Advocates/experts, and journalists from distinguished media houses (Radio, Television, and Newspapers).

The webinar highlighted the need for investment and NCD financing. It emphasized the cost of Inaction, where people affected by NCDs experience out-of-pocket expenditures and make painful trade-offs such as cutting back on education for children or selling assets to pay off their staggering NCD medical bills.

Furthermore, we are mobilizing health stakeholders to build integrated programs and services to bridge the gap between NCDs and other global health priorities. On top of that, during the webinar, we called for integrating NCD services into existing health services such as HIV, Tuberculosis, and Malaria as an alternative source of NCD financing. Considering the magnitude of NCDs and their common risk factors, we called for imposing sin taxes on commodities that are NCD risk factors (sugar-sweetened beverages, alcohol, tobacco, and highly processed foods) and earmarking the taxes collected in NCD prevention, treatment, care, and support.

As Non-Communicable Diseases are everybody's business, we are calling on individuals to invest in themselves and take an active part in NCD prevention as a long-lasting approach in the fight against NCDs. Moreover, participants were encouraged to leverage the power of digital communication platforms and voices to call on friends, peers, colleagues, the community, and policymakers to #ActOnNCDs during and even after the Global Week for Action on NCDs!

Apart from the webinar, we encouraged youth and NCD advocates to use their social media platforms for communication, advocacy and being voices of change by sharing different messages revolving around the year's theme, "INVEST TO PROTECT". Media also played an overriding role in amplifying the voices of people living with NCDs. NCD experts/advocates advocated for more investment to turn the tide on NCDs.

Given the vibrant engagement of youth and NCDs advocates, the Global Week for Actions on NCDs hashtag #ActOnNCDs has been trending in Rwanda for the first day and the fifth day. We highly appreciate whoever took an active part in Global Week for Actions on NCDs in one way or another.