Distinguished delegates,
The 2025 Political Declaration on NCDs and Mental Health raised the level of ambition at a time when the epidemiological shift toward these conditions is accelerating, the burden remains high, and progress in tackling them has been too slow. The gap between need and response is no longer acceptable.
We therefore applaud governments’ recommitment to many of the previous High-Level Meetings’ principles and commitment to establish new targets. The priority now is implementation: turning ambition into national policy, financing, and measurable results.
We urge Member States to:
● Accelerate implementation of evidence-based NCD interventions, prioritising the guidance in WHO’s NCD ‘best buys’, including strengthening health taxes.
● Integrate NCDs into UHC and broader health and development agendas, including through gender-responsive approaches.
● Mobilise and sustain adequate investment for NCD services, as well as increasing domestic resource mobilisation, including through fiscal policies and leveraging international resources for catalytic investment.
● Deliver accountability and support the extension of the Global NCD Monitoring Framework to ensure continuity with hard-won progress.
● Engage people with lived experience and communities, institutionalising social participation in the development, implementation and evaluation of NCD responses.
The resolutions on haemophilia and Steatotic liver diseases, and the upcoming third dialogue on NCD and mental health financing, hosted by WHO and the Philippines in September, represent critical opportunities to translate necessary commitments into immediate and sustained action.
Thank you.
