NCDs claim millions of lives yearly yet lag on global health agendas; this session explores how policy, prevention and care can avert premature death and inequity.
At Davos 2026, leaders argued that non-communicable diseases (NCDs) remain chronically underprioritized despite overwhelming human and fiscal costs. Nancy Brown of the American Heart Association said the core obstacle is political short-termism: prevention pays off over decades, while budgets reward acute care today. She framed the execution gap as “government talk meets actual people,” urging countries to translate global NCD targets into local action plans built on incidence data, care pathways, and technology-enabled adherence.
Shamsheer Vayalil of Burjeel Holdings called for a “redefining moment,” blaming “infrastructure failure” and misaligned incentives that reimburse expensive treatments but not “a $2 call.” He argued NCDs are a macroeconomic threat—“an IMF issue… a central bank issue”—and proposed treating prevention as a scalable business opportunity, even suggesting “an NCD bond” and disruption akin to “the next Amazon” for NCD management.
Johan Westman of AAK emphasized that awareness doesn’t translate into healthier choices when food is unaffordable or unavailable. He advocated “innovation in everyday food” through reformulation that changes population risk “with no change” in consumer behavior. The session closed with calls for new financing mechanisms (even “health credits” like carbon credits), coalition-led standards, and a sharper emergency narrative: “We need to ring the bell.”
Thank you everyone. Welcome to this session which is a stakeholder dialogue. And we'll be talking about NCDs, non-communicable diseases. And this is about the effort to really elevate the importance of NCDs and take them seriously. I want to welcome you all to this session. Those in the room and those who are online. And shortly I'm going to introduce our panel. But if you would like to interact with our session, on social media and other platforms, please remember to use the hashtag we have 2026. So welcome, panel members, and welcome to everyone in the room as well. We we are going to have a conversation now about something that, all of us understand that it's important, but it's been very challenging in the world to really elevate the importance of NCDs, get them to make sure that they are a priority, make sure that there is a concerted effort to really reduce the burden, reduce the risk and reduce the morbidity and mortality that come from from NCDs. But part of the challenge is because we are not really able to bring out the strong arguments for why this is important. And I'm hoping that in our session today, we can be able to to do that on the panel, we've got, three amazing speakers that are going to take us through this. Firstly, next to me, we've got Nancy Brown, who's the chief executive officer of the American Heart Association, and she tells me that she's been doing this for 17 years. So welcome. Let's give her a round of applause.
Thank you.
Next to Nancy, we've got, doctor Shamsheer Vayalil, who's the founder and chair of Bigil Holdings, which is a healthcare company. Thank you very much for joining.
Thank you.
Last but not least, we've got Johan Westman, who's the chief executive officer of Arc. And they deal with food supply chain as well and the supply and number of companies in the industry. Thank you very much for joining us.
Thank you.
So I'm going to go right into it and give you an opportunity to give some opening remarks on this matter. Rapid fire comments, just in terms of your thoughts about why NCDs are important, what what have been the barriers in terms of us reducing the burden? And what do you think we need to do and prioritize in order to take the action forward?
Would you like me to start? Yes, please. Okay. I'd be happy to, you know, non-communicable diseases, are so important because what we're talking about is the lives of people around the world. And it's so easy when to think about all of the attention that focuses on someone after they have a disease or when they're in a critical situation. You know, the entire medical system in our countries gathers around these people in their own way to provide the treatments that that people need. Preventing non-communicable diseases is really has to be the focus, because there's so much we can do through the life course of individuals to help make sure that they're living healthier, longer. And the problem is, you know, it's very hard for governments and policy makers to see the long term benefits when we're living in a short term cycle of how policies get funded. And I think that's the core issue is we need to do a better job of, you know, bringing this to life as it relates to actual people and what can happen to people's lives. If we can have a society that focuses more on prevention and early diagnosis.
So, Nancy. There is a constraint in how we do short term planning from a policy perspective and from an implementation perspective, especially for the gains that we have to realize, like through prevention, where the gains are actually long term, you don't get the reward immediately.
Absolutely. And the funding of the prevention programs, you know, by governments is not necessarily uniformly adopted because we're so we're so focused on short term health care. I live in the United States. And, you know, where we have these huge burdening health care costs, you know, for all kinds of things, largely hospitals. And critical care is the place that the largest amount of money is spent, you know, for a person. And we really need to back that up and find novel partnerships and novel ways to get prevention to become just a way of life.
So we're going to have to be thinking also about government and other key role players partnering with institutions that have a long term view.
Yes, they have a long term view and have novel new ways of bringing prevention programs to scale. You know, the the onset of new health technologies, AI coaching tools, things that can be available to people on their phones. All of these are things that I think we have, we can look forward to in the future.
So there is an opportunity. Your thoughts on this?
I think it's a redefining moment. I think we need to relook at the strategy that we have taken for such a long time. And I think if not, NCD burden will increase and will swallow countries because I don't think anyone can afford to pay such massive healthcare expenses and every government wants to save cost. So I think what is not happening is the alignment of incentives. We don't typically incentivize something to prevent, but at the same time you can treat and then make money. So I come from a healthcare systems provider. We have pre-hospital care. We we do health care in very difficult areas. So I don't think it is not that we don't have enough people to do the cure, but there is a infrastructure failure. There's a there's a systems failure, which doesn't take it to the last mile. And it's a good thing that you brought diverse people on this panel. And I think these are not just becoming any more a health issue. This is societal issues. I think people that could have been prevented with landing in the hospital with a high blood pressure or high diabetes could have been managed better, especially with the agentic AI and all coming. But the fun factor is that a $2 call is not, you know, paid for. But at the same time, expensive treatments are paid for, especially with the with the onset of GLP one, it is getting into so much of a hype and use right now, and there's a good way of connecting all the dots by bringing in different stakeholders. And I if you ask me, this is not just a issue, it's a IMF issue. It's a central bank issue. It's it's it's something that the whole, forces need to align behind it to find out a new strategy, because I think it has been dealt in a very typical way that we have dealt. And I don't think the NCD, target is changed any different from what it was before Covid. So I think probably this is a good time for us to all regroup and call for action for a new strategy or a or an NCD bond, which can be raised and looked specifically on how we can help societies around the globe to bring the learnings from the US to to what works locally. Well, because it's very locally managed, because the food habits change. I'm sure we have the food expert, he I think partly we'll blame him also for.
All the trouble.
Bring it on.
We'll have some fun on the. So I think I think it's a very nice time for us because of the like you said, Nancy, the advent of technology, AI, we are on a perfect spot to look at it.
So on the one hand, the problem is that we are fragmented and siloed and our strategies have been moving like that. And we need a new strategy that is multi-sectoral that that brings different people together, especially because at this juncture we've got developments, innovations in those different sectors that we could bring together into a cohesive strategy, which is multi-sectoral and includes all these innovations. But also, Nancy mentioned the importance of, of of prevention and to your point that, you know, the cost is too high, the burden of disease between 2011 and 2013, one of the reports we will be the world will be spending more than 30 trillion USD because of this. And we could be, you know, instead of incurring the expenses because of NCDs, we could be preventing it and investing that money more in prevention. Your thoughts? Johan?
Yeah. I'll build on what was just said by my my fellow panelist, about a bit about systems and, alignment across. But let's start somewhere very simple and I'll bring it from a food context a bit. Right. Most people, I think, in the world does not wake up in the morning and think about entities. Right. We wake up in the morning, we might think about what to eat. What can I afford to eat today? What does my kids like? What do they want? This evening or even what am I going to wear? Going to a panel or to my work? And what am I going to address today? So I don't think that top of mind is NCDs and prevention. At the same time, I do think that we are aware. So if you asked me, you know, do you know about this? Do you know that the way you eat and the way you exercise, the way you live your everyday life, does that have an impact? If you ask me that, that was a yes. But I think that's where we have a real challenge with a gap between intention or awareness and reality. Right? So healthier options, like if we looked at how food could prevent or the way we live our life, if we were to eat better, if we were to exercise more, I think everyone would agree that that would be a prevention. But at the same time, the everyday life is a choice for a family. What food is affordable, what is available. And I think healthier food today. And the plate that is recommended by also health organizations and so forth, might be more expensive, might not be available to the many in the world, might even take longer time to cook. And in that case, it's not as accessible to everyone. So I think we need to not to stop saying what we shouldn't eat or stop being aware. But I think also pay attention to the food systems that are built in the world. How are they produced? How are they delivered? How do we distribute food and make food available that is also affordable? Many people in the world struggle with that, and some people are very disadvantaged in that. But at the same time, also maybe the part of the the world that is, have a bit more opportunity. We live in urbanized cities. So again, food production at scale, distribution at scale. It all has to work together in a food system that makes food available. And in this case, it would be good if that is a healthy food that is available to the many. I think we need to talk about scale. We're 8 billion people today. We'll soon be 10 billion people. And the portion that lives in urbanized cities is even getting greater. So how to make sure that food that is available in an everyday life for 10 billion people is less negative or even better for you? I think that gap between kind of intention and awareness and the reality, the choice that families make every day, how do we help that or how do we bridge that?
So the risk is that we can be out of touch with reality.
I think we are out of touch.
With reality, honestly.
Let's try to let's try to link the two, because at some, at one level, we do need global policy guidance. And the UN, the 80th UN General Assembly said that NCDs need to be in metabolic disease, need to be taken seriously. And there's a there's a recognition for that. The World Health Organization has also declared obesity a priority. And so so at that level, you know, there is clear aspiration to actually prioritize this. But, Nancy, you deal with care pathways. You deal with things on the ground. How do we go from the global aspirations and turn that into reality for action when, as Johan says, that, you know, we could be coming up with strategies that are not reflective of the reality of people on the ground, and there's so much diversity and variation on the ground in people's lives, different socioeconomic status, different parts of the world. How do we take that and make it a reality on the ground for people in order, in order to make a proposed strategy like this achievable?
Yeah, it's thank you for that question. It's so important that we do it. In my mind, it's always government talk meets actual people. And, you know, if you were to go around and survey 100 people, you know, 100 doctors, 100 health care workers and ask them about the NCD strategy of the UN or the W.H.O., it doesn't mean anything to real people. So part of what any country has to do is to step back and say, what are, you know, what is the incidence of disease in my country? What are the the prevalence of the risk factors that might be causing people to get, you know, to have these, NCDs that then governments have to spend so much money paying for. And, you know, I can use an example. In the United States, it's very clear, you know, people, women over the age of 22, more than 50% of them have one cardiovascular risk factor, because you include obesity in that you look at the levels of elevated blood pressure that are unmanaged in the United States of America, you know, a wealthy country where people are not managing their blood pressure. 50% of people in our country don't have their blood pressure managed to goal. And so you have to go after these things systemically and say, okay, why is that? Where are the people who don't have it managed? What are the programs, the services that we can offer to help people? You know, in the United States, we write the guidelines to define the levels of optimal care for all these conditions, and for all these risk factors. And so, you know, using technology to make sure that physicians and health workers are armed with the latest recommendations, and that there are tools and resources and access to healthy food and to medications that can help people, and that there's an interaction between health systems, health care providers and patients. And I agree with what Shamsher said. Like we are on the frontier of being able to use all of these new technologies to take out a lot of the friction in the system. That is the reason that people are not adherent to goal. I mean, it's for us at the American Heart Association. We've spent 100 years working on these issues, and new issues continue to come along. Obesity has created, you know, large issues of metabolic disease, pre-diabetes, you know, elevated levels of hypertension, lack of physical activity, healthy food. It's all one thing, but you've got to have an action plan. And it's not just the role of the government to sit in, you know, a box over here and write an action plan. You have to have organizations on the ground who are working with actual people invested in making a difference.
Is it possible, is it possible to make like you're talking about young people as young as 22 with risk factors? Is it possible to make those people prioritize changing behaviors and adopting these interventions when they don't feel sick? Because we've also taught them that you only really need to respond when you are actually sick and you've got a diagnosis of some sort, but they are not sick yet. And how do we get them to prioritize well-being and changing behaviors and practices?
Yeah, it's the narrative. You know, what is the narrative we're using? Which is why the NCD narrative, you know, if I'm a 22 year old woman in New York City, that means nothing to me. What do I care about? You know, I care about having time with my family and my friends. I care about having a career and a job. What are the things that allow me to have that? You know, the things that allow me to have that are feeling great every day? Using words that resonate with people, longevity. You know, there's so much focus now on mental health and well-being, and that is so connected to how a person feels, whether it's because they're eating the right things, exercising the right way. We've got to take government speak meets actual people, and I think we can make a big set of progress.
So that's really powerful because actually, the UN General Assembly resolution speaks to mental health as well. In addition to Johann, I have I'm wondering around the same question we may be asking people to adopt healthier lifestyles, but and asking them to eat food, certain foods that are good for them. But we eat what's available to us. We eat what tastes good, what we enjoy. Your thoughts on that?
Yeah, I mean, that's a fact, I think. And we are we're human beings. I think there's a lot of habit and local culture and so forth. I mean, I take often the example, you wake up in the morning, you send your kids off to school, you go to work. You know, there's a certain routine in that. But maybe let's talk about how what we could do. Right? Yeah. So I think that's the gap I was addressing before that there might be an ideal solution for something, right? This is what you should eat, this is what you should cook and so forth. But then you have the reality, which is that everyday life and what you choose and you're not always aware or you need to be reminded. But let's speak a bit about how food can be a very strong lever in the current setup that we have today. We can agree it can be a lot better. So if we were to focus a bit more. So this is the ideal food plate, right? But what about the food plate that we eat every day? What if we were to make everyday food better and with better? I think we need to keep in mind that it needs to address quite a few things at the same time. So food needs to be accessible. It needs to be affordable, it needs to taste good and it needs to be healthy and sustainable. And that's often where it becomes very, very difficult. Right. So it might be available to a few. So a select few with a bit of money. You're educated, you have listened to everything and you go and shop with that in mind. But for others that choice every day is a choice of seconds with your family waiting or whatever. But then take an example of innovation in food. We have been working for many years, and there's still a lot to do with reformulation and ingredient innovation targeting saturated fat and trans fats. And this example is about replacing the existing fat component in a food product that used to be saturated and or trans fat, with a new fat ingredient that is used in the same product. For the consumer, there's no change. You go and buy the same product off the shelf, you go home and you eat it and it tastes the same. It didn't cost you the same, but for the system as a whole, we have actually replaced that ingredient from a saturated fat trans fat into a healthier fat component. If you take that example and you do that on thousands of products that is consumed all over the world, or maybe, you know, 5 billion people, then you get impact at scale. It might be only an incremental improvement. It might be far away from that ideal plate, but it has an impact on billions. So I think that is where we have a responsibility as a as a food industry, and we're doing it. But I think we can do a lot more. And back to a bit about incentives and recommendations. We're not always in sync because there is a disconnect, and often good solutions are not affordable to the many.
Do you think that the companies that you work with and supply would be willing to come on board into a strategy like this?
Absolutely. I think, first of all, let's make it clear as a food industry, we have a responsibility just like many other actors, right? Right. But I think it's been mentioned already to make food systems work at scale. We speak about food companies, about food suppliers, about health organization recommendations, about policy makers, about cities and countries and so forth. We need to be in sync. And I think today there is a bit of even, you know, incentives pulling in different directions. So if we can do anything on on that and also make sure that a bit more money, funding and focus came to prevention versus reaction, I think it could help.
So there's a report from Deloitte that is saying that, for every $1 we put in prevention, we get returns of eight, eight, eight, £8, £1, £8 return. So on investment. Now to me that makes the case strong to invest a lot more in prevention. But I wonder, Shamsher, if this is going to be a disincentive for existing companies like yourself that, may be focusing on, technologies and supplies that are more oriented towards treatment. How do you how do you.
I never believed in the long run. The hospitals would stay the way they are right now. I think it will become virtual. It will go a bit beyond walls. Community engagements, community care. And we always said that we should make money even when the patients don't reach to your hospitals. Or in other words, they should only come when there is a real need. And that's what has evolved our business. Even because we started with pre-hospital care. Because when we started off with hospitals, the large employers came to us and said that we are losing man hours. So start doing things on the site. Please don't take them out for things which are not required. So that gave us a very different idea of opening a business which looks after huge, oil and gas companies, energy companies were we do a constant occupational health, you know, when when we see people with hand injuries, we know that they have a vision problem because we do so much screening that showed that they were Asian population were working, and they're more genetically predisposed to cardiac and other NCD conditions. So it's always that opportunity that we see that has not been seen. And that's also business, right? If you think that it's only that patients come and then we make money, that's a wrong approach. But if you decide that something like NCDs can be a product, and it should not be like the tobacco industry, right? They come and put the sticker of lungs and things, but still people get used to it. So even food is very habitual to to change from one pattern to the other, because we have the overabundance issue on one side where kids can order anything online food comes, whatever they like their choice every day. But in our childhood, it was not the case, right? We have to literally wait for that Friday or Sunday that you get to eat what you like. And it's not always linked to food alone. It's a lot of genetic predisposition. It's multifactorial. So I think we need to start from schools to revise those curriculums to make them more responsible. And today's kids are so smart. They you don't need to. They can teach you more than what you can tell them.
Absolutely.
And especially the silos that is created even inside the homes with social media over, over use of technology that is also getting against us because people are getting more, you know, siloed into their rooms. Yeah. The level of discussions are very minimal compared to what it used to be. And it's all good. It's what will come is coming and it's always to embrace. So we even did a research recently where we sent the insulin pen to space to study the effects of, microgravity on, on, blood sugars. And what was more interesting was we had a lot of appreciation from school kids.
Right.
Who always dreamt of becoming an astronaut. Because now if you ask kids what they want to be in countries like UAE, because space is the new dream, because even our leadership keeps pumping the dreams to space, to to Mars. So kids are adaptable, faster than what we can even think of. But only thing is that we need to use the channels we need. We need to use the streams. We need to prepare the the things for them in the way they want to see it, not the way the W.H.O. just want to see it in a particular lens. People are not scared anymore of diabetes or blood pressure. It's like becoming something.
That can be a pill and it will get managed.
It can be managed. You eat what you want and take the pill so they don't look beyond that. I think it's time that we rebrand, even if you ask me, it's time to rebrand diabetes. You know, it's been a name for a very long time, so I think New thoughts needs to come in. New, actors need to pitch in. And I think this could be the pattern that we can somebody who's specialized in policy making, making sure that standardized care pathways have been introduced across the world by. It's very. That's right. I train thousands of people on the protocols that are recommended by. And I think that's where the opportunity is also there because we need to have workforce ready because we are short of workforce. We don't have enough workforce that can, make sure that NCDs are not treated in hospitals. It should be treated in schools, it should be managed in communities, it should be managed in sports, it should be it should be a lifestyle rather than a disease or a scare mongering is gone. I think we are in a different world at this point of time.
And can I just add on to that.
Add on to that, but also just start taking us on how we start to achieve that, take us in that direction.
I would love to just add on an example to what Shamsheer was saying. You know, when I think about combustible tobacco use in the United States now, vaping is a whole other topic we could have a long discussion about. You know, if you look at the reduction over time to this historically low level of combustible tobacco use in the United States, it was actually driven by youth more than by adults, you know, because youth started to realize, thanks to campaigns like the Truth Campaign, which is a big media campaign by kids for kids in the United States. It was the kids coming home saying to their parents, why are you smoking? You know, this terrible, like, what are you doing? And it really drove the rates of combustible cigarette use down. And so finding ways that these issues that mean something to young people, and I continue to believe that health and well-being, it's food, it's exercise, it's monitoring your risk factors. It's all those things. But if you want to start a next generation, it's really about how do I feel, you know, social acceptability. It's the it's that where the head meets the body. Right. And I think the same thing could happen with young folks as it relates to to food, etc.. Your question about how we start to integrate care pathways.
Is that.
Yeah, but I like the point you make that actually, because one of the value proposition here is about longevity.
Yes.
Then it starts to make sense that targeting the youth can actually be a good approach when we put this emphasis on prevention. But please. Yeah.
And targeting the youth meaning the youth own an issue because I think it's a big mistake when we say we're going to go have the youth do.
X.
It's, you know, the youth have to own an issue and make it theirs. And that's really the art of how this happens. But this is where technology companies can play, you know, and, you know, you think about gamifying health, starting with young people. There's a lot of things that have been talked about for a long time, and I think we need to focus in on making some of those things a reality. But while we're doing that, there are invisible ways that we can improve health of people. I think food companies have a large role to play and some are really good citizens. Thank you for all the reformulation and the things that you're doing. And there are a lot that are not good citizens. You know, there are a lot of unhealthful food products being targeted to people, especially, lower persons of lower economic status, where it's easier and more affordable to eat ultra processed foods, you know, fast foods, quick serve food products that are laden with fat and calories and sodium. And it becomes a way of life. And it's very hard to change that over time. And so we appeal always to food companies that market these food products to persons to stop doing it, you know, to.
Do they.
Listen.
You know, there are there have been some success stories around reformulation, especially taking sodium out of food products, reducing the amount of sugar in food products. But no, you know, I mean, we live in a capitalist society and companies are trying to make money. And so that to me, like you want to talk about specific strategies that can make a difference. I think in unison, we need to band together to help, you know, pay, to help raise attention to the fact that we need to call on all food companies to do their part. Some are doing their part, some could do a lot more.
You know, but but absolutely.
I mean, here's a call.
This is an absolutely important conversation to have. And I think, I think to get real intervention or real improvement at scale, we need to look at how it is commercially viable for companies to do something, how it is an easy choice in the everyday life for consumers. Right. So I think if we tell companies to not earn money, that's not going to work. If we if we have incentives that pull in different directions, that's not going to work. And the same thing, if we threat people, you can't eat this, you can't eat that. And then the everyday life kicks in. I don't think it's going to work. It will work for you.
What will work, John? What will.
So so I think we need to continue on the path of, yes, awareness and education so that you have a better understanding of what is good for you. Continue from the food industry. I'm absolutely there. We have a huge responsibility, but we also need to make sure that the financial models reward innovation that hits the shelf in retail, that hits the food system, that consumers are exposed to every day. And that's in all honesty, right? It's not necessarily there today. There is a lot of money funding, as you said, that that financial example you took in the beginning that for every dollar there is an eightfold, payback, you could say, yeah, but that's not how the financial system works. That money is not coming into the retail store and the funding for the food companies, because in all honesty, consumers today it's very difficult to ask them to pay more for sustainable products, to pay more for healthier products. It becomes a choice and the habits and so on. So I think we need to find a way to get companies, policymakers, health recommendations to be a bit more in sync. And so policymaking can play a role for intervention. Companies need to take their responsibility. So my my take is that we need to work even harder on innovation in everyday food, because it has an impact, because I also know that policymaking across the whole world in food is extremely difficult. Yeah. So I think we need to continue to take that responsibility. But I also don't think it works to to just tell people, take your responsibility, accept, earn a bit less money, but rather think about where is that incentive for the company, for the ingredient provider, for the consumer, for the policymaker in a certain country, how can we be more in sync?
And that's why the dialogue is important. Yesterday we had a roundtable on NCDs. And, one of the people that was there was Doctor Tedros, from the Who, the director general, and he put out an invitation to say that if you've got suggestions on what is it that can be done to turn this situation around in us taking NCDs seriously, put it on the table. And, to an extent where he said the World Health Assembly is coming up in May and if you are organized enough, if you coordinate the effort well enough, we can have a session at the World Health Assembly and put this proposal on the table. So your point to say that we need a financial model that works, can we actually develop a financial model, make a proposal on a financial model that works, that works well for prevention, that works well for good citizenship, that works well for good values incentives, that works well for the youth as well in terms of long term benefits, not just short term planning. To counteract this problem of sort of the policies and the implementation plans that we have that are quite short term at government level. So that is an open invitation that we're going to have to take up. And we have to think about how to use that opportunity right now, as we are saying, that actually the door is open.
I think, I think I would take one step further to say that this is a business opportunity as well. And if anyone can address it, it's the big business houses which thinks that this is a huge unmet need and that's what drives every business. Right. But if you try to make it like a favor, like socially responsible, we are all socially responsible, but no one goes against that type. So I think it's time to see this as a business to address the huge NCD unmet need, which can comprise various formulas, equations, and not as a policy matter alone. Because you have to remember, we're dealing with a big biggest industries in the world. It's not easy to change the minds, the behaviors, like let's say the fmcgs, the all those are very deep into the people. It's not easy for them also to change, not for people to change as well. But I think it's time for disruptions. Probably this is the time to build the next Amazon or the Facebook in combating NCD. That could be one of the top ten most valued companies in the world. So that could be a JV collaboration where multiple actors come to play, drive this as a business, not just as a policy matter.
Yeah. I'm going to open the floor for questions. In a minute. But before I do, I'd like you to comment on this point to say, you know, we've seen it with other with infectious diseases, for example, where stakeholders successfully came together, like the Global Fund, for example, you know, UNAids, you know, successfully came together to drive the effort to bring down infections.
Yes.
And there was a lot of the global fund dispensers were at about $4 billion a year. There was a lot of effort that was put into that is also saying that actually, you could also attract the cooperation and interests of entrepreneurs who are looking at business opportunities here. How do we do that for for NCDs? We we've seen how it can be done for infectious diseases, but how do we do that for NCDs?
I think it all comes back to packaging and the narrative. You know, when there is an infectious disease that has the opportunity to immediately affect millions and millions of people around the globe, it's an emergency and people don't see NCDs as an emergency.
They see it is.
It is, of course, but you know, it's around the narrative. We've got to ring the bell to say, my God, here's here are the number of lives that are being lost every day prematurely because of NCDs. We need the business community, the tech community, the food community, everyone to come together and think about a new model. I love what Shamsheer is saying because something drastic has to change. There are amazing things happening on the ground in many countries to help people. There's there's taxation strategies. I was thinking about a lot of the work when you were speaking that we do in the US on sugary beverage taxation, just like we worked for decades on taxing tobacco products. Drive down the rate sugary beverage taxation, drive down the consumption.
The thing is, you see more coffee shops than ever.
Exactly.
And, you know.
That's the point.
More crowd outside. You see the lines?
Yeah, exactly.
And so, you know, there has to be something new. And I think we have to be able to succinctly define what is at stake here. And that's the problem. We have not done that. And I think we could do a much better job.
So we're going to need to see what the blueprint looks like for this. And it's urgent if we need to be putting it on the table for, for May, the door is open and it may not be open for long actually. So we have to think about that.
Let's work.
Around it. Yeah, we'll do it.
Any questions in the room? There's two questions over here if we can get the mic, please.
Yeah.
Hello. Carlos from Mexico. Actually, I'm part of the Global Shapers community and work in health related, projects regarding assistive technologies for people with disability. Most of them acquire disability and amputation due to diabetes, actually, which is a non-communicable disease. And I have been wondering, in the environment area, we have these carbon credits, carbon credits. Right. Like where there are companies actually investing in this kind of area to actually support initiatives and make this exchange. And right now you are talking about financing. And what I have been seeing during the past days is that we need to take early action. We need to develop new technologies, but we also need to implement the ideas that are already there. But sometimes they are cost. They have some implementation costs that are difficult. So my question here is, is there a way in which we could actually make our own health credits in order to actually foster healthcare development technologies that could take a little bit longer? Because the problem here is that they want us to go lower on prices while we actually start researching more on food technologies and health technologies. So is there a way in which we could actually achieve something like that?
Really good question. Let's keep that question and take the the second hand from behind you. Carlos.
Thank you very much. I actually had a very similar question along those same lines. So we're in sync. Yeah. I direct the sorry. I direct the Lancet countdown on Health and climate change, which is a research collaboration working at the intersection between health and climate change. And there's a lot of synergies between climate change. And obviously the prevention of NCDs could do for climate and vice versa. But I was thinking about kind of the commercial determinants of health that is kind of at the core of both crisis and the kind of the lack of progress that we've made over the past years. So actually, how things have worsened over the past years when it comes to commercial determinants and how misregulated the industry is. And I was thinking about what we're trying to do with climate that I think is kind of has a lot of similarities with what's happening with health. And one thing that we've seen lately is corporations that are struggling with uneven playing fields. So leveling the playground has become really, really important for early movers and to enable kind of equal progress towards decarbonization with healthcare. That's a similar challenge in that if you have different standards for different corporations, it's really difficult to be an early mover and to have profit and to access the market. So I was wondering whether there's any efforts going towards coalitions of big organizations in terms of generating pressure to standards that can improve health? And whether corporations are thinking also about kind of health of the workforce that we've seen has such a huge impact on productivity and on outputs in across the whole scope of non-communicable.
Thank you very much for that. So we're going to wrap up, so I'm going to ask that you respond to those questions, starting with you, Johan, and also give your last line final punch of what we are taking forward.
I think, first of all, it's exactly interestingly, exactly the same reflection I had because there are two focus areas for me here. It's about sustainability as a whole and food and food sustainability. And then, health. Right. And I made the same reflection, preparing for for today. When I look at the solutions and the call it disconnected difficulties, I actually see the same challenges. Right. So across food, it's extremely difficult to get a coordination on policy making incentives to drive sustainability. Consumers are not paying a premium. And it's the same challenge I brought to here. How do we make that everyday choice affordable, while at the same time being sustainable and healthy? And I think that's where the intervention needs to be. Finding a way of commercial make it commercially viable to invest in this. But but it's extremely difficult today. Thank you very. There are synergies between the two.
Thank you very much.
For your medicine that has been propagating for a long time. Climate and health is the most inter connected thing. The first thing that gets affected in climate is health for sure. We have seen infrastructures getting destroyed, but again, I think it's time that mental health is a huge issue as well. So connecting everything and helping nations to look after their societies is going to be a huge responsibility.
Excellent.
Yeah.
I would add on, a couple of things we're coming to mind when I heard your questions at the we have two large initiatives. One is called the Periodic Table of Food, where it's a global, organization that we lead on behalf of the Rockefeller Foundation to identify the constituents in all food products so that we can talk about bioengineering more healthful food at lower costs, with climate sensitivity. And to your point, on workplace, you know, this is a big area we work in in the United States. Our employers are fed up with increased health care costs that are going up 10% a year. And so our employees, by the way, fed up with these costs. So it all comes back to new models of prevention focused and integrated health and well-being between clinical care prevention and mental health and well-being.
Thank you very much. And we'll take that forward. The health credit really important question. So can we give our panelists a round of applause? Thank you very much.
Thank you.
And thanks to all of you for joining. Much appreciated. Thank you.