A visiting nurse from Seongbuk Home Heath Care Center is demonstrating a waist stretching exercises during the home visit
Preventing and controlling noncommunicable diseases
Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) impose a significant burden on health and development in the Western Pacific Region. NCDs are the leading causes of death and disability in the Region. WHO Western Pacific Regional Office supports Member States in the prevention and control of NCDs to:
- Raise priority accorded to NCDs through international cooperation and advocacy.
- Strengthen national capacity, governance, multisectoral action, and partnerships.
- Reduce the major modifiable risk factors, such as tobacco use, harmful use of alcohol, unhealthy diets, and physical inactivity.
- Develop and implement effective legal frameworks.
- Orient health systems through people-centred health care and universal health coverage.
- Promote high-quality research and development.
- Monitor trends, determinants and progress to achieve global, regional and national targets through evidence-based interventions.
The Regional Office’s work is guided by the Regional Action Framework for Noncommunicable Disease Prevention and Control in the Western Pacific, which delineates the regional vision, guiding principles, objectives and recommended actions to counter and reverse the growing burden of NCDs. This Regional Action Framework is aligned with the WHO Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases 2013–2030 and regional action frameworks that can work together to create a united vision for health in the Western Pacific Region. The regional action plan recognizes that many of the most effective actions necessary to tackle the NCD burden lie outside the health sector. Policies in sectors responsible for education, trade, food, alcohol and urban development need to be as much part of the action on NCDs as the responses from the health sector. A health-in-all-policies approach will increasingly play an important role in rendering visibility to the need for dialogue and consensus on the impact of policies on health in general and the NCD epidemic in particular.
