• Item type: Guideline/policy recommendation
• Language: English
• Author: World Health Organization
• Publication Date: , 2011
• 9789241502313(2.71 MB)

This paper describes a new financial planning tool developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) to assist low- and middle income-countries in scaling up a core set of interventions to tackle noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), such as heart disease and stroke, diabetes, cancer and chronic lung disease. NCDs currently kill 36 million people per year, and the burden continues to escalate, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. These countries often lack resources and capacity to tackle these diseases, and therefore need to adopt an incremental approach as they move to address the gaps in NCD prevention and control. To prevent disability and death, it will be important to act on two levels - through population-wide measures to reduce exposure to risk factors such as tobacco use, and through interventions targeting individuals who already have NCDs or are at high risk for developing them. A wide range of health interventions is available for both purposes. One challenge is to assess which interventions will bring the most benefi t for the lowest cost - in other words, what are the ‘best buys’. A further challenge is to assess the cost of their scaled-up implementation. The WHO tool aims to help countries make that assessment. It is a tool for fi nancial planning (over the period 2011-2025) that can be used to forecast resource needs at national and sub-national levels. The tool can enhance traditional budgeting mechanisms in countries and provide new information to development agencies about the resources needed to tackle the growing burden of NCDs.