The NCD Alliance is consulting with people living with a range of NCDs, including care partners on the following:
The experience of living with/managing NCD conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic
Their recommendations to shape stronger health systems and more resilient communities as part of and beyond the COVID-19 response
Their perspectives to inform a Global Charter on the Meaningful Involvement of People Living with NCDs planned for 2021, aiming to promote an NCD response that puts people first
The online consultation survey is available in three languages: English, Spanish or French. The surveywill close on Sunday, 25 October 2020.
#NCDVoices Stronger, Together: We invite you to share the consultation survey with your networks of people living with NCDs!
Read more about the Our Views, Our Voices initiative here. If you have any questions or clarifications, please feel free to contact Manjusha Chatterjee at [email protected]
Please help us to get the information we need by completing a few short online questions.What support do you, as a person living with NCDs want during COVID-19 and beyond?
The African NCDs Network is conducting a short questionnaire to help us understand how the people of Africa who live with NCDs (PLWNCDs) are challenged during the COVID-19?
The term PLWNCDs also includes family members, friend, care partners or caregivers currently living in Africa. It takes a group to survive an NCD.
By completing the survey you will tell policy makers and advocates like us how to support PLWNCDS and build back better after COVID-19 in Africa.
African NCDs Network called on WHO AFRO (Regional Office for Africa) to address the needs of people living with NCDs in the COVID-19 context at WHO’s Regional Committee Meeting.
As every year, WHO regional offices schedule their Regional Committee Meetings (RCM) between the months of August and October, to discuss and monitor progress on regional commitments. The first RCM was the 70th Session of the Regional Committee for Africa, which took place on August 25th and was held virtually for the first time.
As part of our post-World Health Assembly regional advocacy efforts, the NCD Alliance supported a virtual delegation comprised of Vicki Pinkney-Atkinson from South Africa and chair of the African NCDs Network (ANN) Secretariat and person living with NCDs, and George Msengi from Tanzania and member of the Secretariat of the ANN to participate in the meeting.
Due to the shortened, 1-day virtual format, the AFRO RCM considered only a few agenda items including the Work of WHO in the African Region 2019–2020; a special event on the COVID-19 response in the region, and ‘Celebrating the certification of wild poliovirus eradication in the African Region’.
NCD Alliance and ANN submitted a joint statement on the ‘Special event on the COVID-19 response in the WHO African Region’ calling Member States in the AFRO region to elevate the voices of people living with NCDs, young people and marginalised populations, by assessing the pandemic’s impact on their needs, challenges and priorities; and to include them in COVID-19 decision-making processes and responses.
The joint statement was supported by Alliance des Organisations de lutte contre les MNT – Côte d’Ivoire, Africa Diabetes Alliance, Africa Stroke Organization, Burkina Faso NCD Alliance, Burundi NCD Alliance, Cameroon Civil Society NCD Alliance, Coalition des ONG et Associations – Contre les MNT au Togo, Community Development Awareness and Health Empowerment Foundation, Fondation de Lutte contre le Diabète et les MNT, Foundation for the fight against Diabetes and NCDs, Ghana NCD Alliance, Malawi NCD Alliance, NCD Alliance Nigeria, NCD Alliance of Kenya, Rwanda NCD Alliance, South African NCDs Alliance, Tanzania NCD Alliance, and West African Alcohol Policy Alliance.
The statement highlighted the link between NCDs, COVID-19 and achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) by encouraging WHO AFRO and Member States to:
Prioritise NCD prevention and control as an essential component of UHC and incorporate NCD prevention within essential primary health care services as a foundation for UHC.
Save lives by increasing equitable, universal access to quality, and affordable essential medicines and products.
Address the NCD financing gap by increasing sustainable financing for health and improving efficiency in investments.
Include UHC for NCDs in COVID-19 national response and preparedness plans; addressing any disruptions in the care and treatment of people living with NCDs, and aiming to promote a people-centered approach in promoting healthy lives among populations.
You can access NCDA’s Advocacy Briefing for the AFRO RCM here; and the statement submitted here.
Inform yourself of the special measures taken in your communityas well as the services and the sources of reliable information that are available during lockdown (e.g. home deliveries, psychosocial support, health ministry website, alternative access to your pension).
Create a list of the basic supplies that you will need for at least 2 weeks and try to get these delivered where possible(e.g.non-perishable food items, household products, batteries for assistive devices you may use, and prescription medicines). Or ask family members, caregivers, neighbours or community leaders to help with ordering and/or delivery of groceries or prescription medicines. Top up mobile phone credit and identify a safe place to charge your phone regularly so that you can keep in contact with family and friends and reach emergency services if needed.
Make a list of emergency numbers (e.g. COVID-19COVID-19 emergencies contact the hotline 0800 029 999 or WhatsApp 0600 12 3456, nearby hospital, hotline for victims of abuse, psychosocial support hotline) and support contacts (e.g. family members and friends, main caregiver, community care worker, associations of older persons). If you live alone, you may wish to share this list and ask your neighbours, family or caregiver to be in touch regularly, for example, by phone or video chat.
Discuss with your health-care worker how your health needs can be addressed during COVID-19. This may involve postponing non-urgent appointments, talking to your doctor or health-care worker by phone or video chat instead of in-person and/or revising your vaccination schedule. Contact [email protected] for general NCDs related planning.
If you rely on the support provided by a caregiver, identify with another person that you trust to support your daily living and care needs in case your caregiver is unable to continue to provide care. Together, you can note down all the personal care and assistance that you require and how it should be provided and share it with this trusted person so that they can be ready to provide care in case of need.
If you are the primary caregiver of another person who is care dependent (e.g. grandchild, older spouse, child with a disability), identify a person that you and the person that you care for trust to take on your caregiving responsibilities in case you fall sick. Local authorities or volunteer organizations that provide support in these situations in your community might be able to help.
If multiple people live in your home, if possible prepare a separate room or space in your home so that anyone showing symptoms compatible with COVID-19 can be isolated from others. If you do not have space for self-isolation, contact your community leaders or local health authorities to see if there is community space that could help you or other household members self-isolate.
Think about what matters most to you regarding care and support, including medical treatment, in case something happens to you and you are unable to make your own decisions. If you want to develop an advanced care plan to record your treatment and care wishes, you can talk about it with your health-care worker or someone that you trust. You can write down your wishes and share them with people you trust.
Only 3 provinces have draft (not officially approved) NCDs plans and none have a budgetary allocation that can be traced to NCDs. Assessing the extent of NCDs roll out is difficult as neither budgets nor monitoring mechanisms are available. The three provinces are Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga (see Table 1).
No province meets the all of the criteria for an operational NCDs plan:
NGOs & PLWNCDs engaged in national NCD plan development
Provincial budgetary allocation for prevention and treatment
Intersectoral NCDs mechanism including NGOs, PLWNCDs and private sector
NCDs plan with a ‘whole of government’ approach, i.e. with areas for action beyond the health sector.
NCDs plans could be standardised if a template existed and that could easily be one of the first tasks of the long delayed NCDs Commission / National Health Commission.
Discouraged NCDs personnel in provinces
Dedicated health officials from the provincial heath head offices work on NCDs despite the low priority given by leaders to fight NCDs. One such worker recently said: “I have been told there is no budget for NCDs health promotion in our province for the rest of the financial year. What am I supposed to do for the next 5 months? It is very discouraging.”
Table 1: NCDs plans available and operational in provinces
Eastern Cape: Unknown
No web-based documentation found and no response to request for NCDs plan.
Free State Unknown
No web-based documentation found and no response to request for NCDs plan.
Gauteng: Partial
Completed draft NCDs operational plan that is combined with geriatrics and eye care. (26) Goals, targeted and with budget request. Intersectoral objectives with meetings and district coordinators already take place. Availability of plan not known.
KwaZulu-Natal Partial
Completed draft NCDs plan used to guide activities which presented at the intersectoral KZN–SA NCD Alliance Indaba (workshop) in June 2014.(27). However, support is implied by the attendance of the Member of the Executive Committee (MEC) for Health at the NCDs meeting. (28)
Limpopo: unknown
No web-based documentation found and no response to request for NCDs plan.
Only 3 provinces have draft (not officially approved) NCDs plans and none have a budgetary allocation that can be traced to NCDs. Assessing the extent of NCDs roll out is difficult as neither budgets nor monitoring mechanisms are available. The three provinces are Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga (see Table 1).