Valdai Club

On March 10, the Valdai Club experts discussed the experience both Russian and the world have had combating non-communicable diseases (NCDs).  Andrey Bystritskiy, Chairman of the Board of the Valdai Club Foundation, noted in his opening remarks that NCDs cause more than 70% of deaths in the world and remain the main threat to human health, despite the fact that in the public consciousness this threat was somewhat overshadowed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Oleg Salagay, Deputy Minister of Healthcare of the Russian Federation, said that fighting non-communicable diseases is, in a sense, more difficult than fighting infectious ones. Russia is making great efforts to increase the availability of medical care for people with NCDs and has made significant progress. However, the prevalence of non-communicable diseases is largely determined by risk factors - tobacco or alcohol use, poor diet, and low physical activity.  They constitute the main contribution to the development of NCDs and it is extremely difficult to counteract these factors, which are closely intertwined with human behaviour and issues of personal life and personal freedoms, the Deputy Minister stressed.

Nick Banatvala, Head of the United Nations Interagency Task Force on the Prevention and control of Non-communicable Diseases, described the situation with NCDs in the world against the backdrop of the pandemic. “This pandemic should remove all doubts: we need to pay special attention to NCDs if we want to create a sustainable health environment,” he said, adding that the pandemic and the non-communicable diseases, causing increased mortality in COVID-19, are closely related and together create a kind of “perfect storm” that exacerbates human suffering. He also said that the pandemic has undermined the diagnosis and treatment of non-communicable diseases around the world, and self-isolation has led to a decrease in physical activity and an increase in alcohol consumption. These factors will continue to be felt, despite the better economic situation, the UN representative believes. Speaking about Russian activities in the field of countering NCDs, both at the global and at the domestic level, he noted that Russia is at the forefront of this fight against non-communicable diseases. This is manifested both in the reduced consumption of tobacco and alcohol within the country, and in the assistance provided to the WHO and in active participation in international projects.

“Non-infectious diseases are always a complication of external stress experienced by the body,” said Alexey Deykin, head of the Core Facility Centre at the Institute of Gene Biology, Russian Academy of Sciences. “Now we are approaching a new frontier, when traditional instruments for medicine are largely exhausted and here an active position in genetics can become a breakthrough direction.”  Russia is a leader in the development of gene therapy drugs, and now the country has launched several projects for gene therapy clinics, he added. Environmental and lifestyle factors are of course important, but the next step must be to fight disease in terms of molecular control, he said.

Carina Ferreira-Borges, Acting Head of the WHO European Office for the Prevention and Control of Non-communicable Diseases, pointed out in her speech that non-communicable diseases cannot be perceived as an isolated factor - the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals directly depends on combating them. She stressed Russia's success in tackling tobacco and alcohol consumption as a risk factor for NCDs, and mentioned that Russia was awarded by the UN for its fight against non-communicable diseases and progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, remaining an example for many countries.