A new alliance has gath­ered to fight non-communicable dis­ease in the under-developed world. This new health alliance includes orga­ni­za­tions from the US, India and China. Health issues such as tobacco use, and pol­lu­tion kill 11.5 mil­lion peo­ple per year.

From this AFP arti­cle that we found at Google News, we read more about the new alliance and what it plans to combat.

The Global Alliance for Chronic Dis­ease, which brings together insti­tu­tions man­ag­ing an esti­mated 80 per­cent of all pub­lic health research fund­ing world­wide, announced its first tar­gets for action in a state­ment this week.

The alliance said it would seek to reduce hyper­ten­sion, tobacco use and the indoor pol­lu­tion caused by the types of cook­ing stoves used in many devel­op­ing countries.

The group, founded last year by orga­ni­za­tions from the United States, China, India, Canada, Britain and Aus­tralia, said the three pri­or­i­ties were cho­sen because they con­tribute to one in five deaths world­wide each year.

The tar­gets were selected dur­ing the organization’s inau­gural sci­en­tific sum­mit, held in Novem­ber in New Delhi, India.

Accord­ing to the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion, which belongs to the group’s board, chronic non-communicable dis­eases (CNCDs) were respon­si­ble for some 60 per­cent of the 58 mil­lion deaths world­wide recorded in 2006.

The num­ber of deaths caused by CNCDs is twice the com­bined total of deaths from HIV/AIDS, tuber­cu­lo­sis, malaria, mater­nal and peri-natal con­di­tions and nutri­tional defi­cien­cies, accord­ing to the alliance.

“The health impact and socio-economic cost of CNCDs is enor­mous and ris­ing, upend­ing efforts to com­bat poverty,” the group said in a statement.

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