The Disease Management Association of India (DMAI) has urged Prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh to draft a Chronic Disease Bill to address the growing concerns over the Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) in the country.

The DMAI has sent a letter to the Prime Minister demanding him to take a firm action on it and put it in his action plan for the UN summit. The demand comes in wake of the United Nations high level summit on NCDs to be held in September this year. The Summit is expected to be attended the Prime minister, who will be representing and submitting an action plan for the country.

The DMAI wants the PM to consider the demands and opinion of the stakeholders from the country to be included while drafting the action plan for the UN summit so that India would be able highlight the issues at the international arena.

According to Rajendra Pratap Gupta, president and director, DMAI, “The NCD epidemic has reached such proportions that it now constitutes a major risk to global prosperity. NCD prevention and control should not be seen as competing with other development and health priorities, and solutions must be integrated with existing initiatives. It needs to be prioritised in countries' health and development plans and must address the need for social insurance to reduce the potential for huge expenditure by individuals who suffer from an NCD.”

The four major NCDs include diabetes, cancer, heart disease and chronic respiratory disease. It is estimated that some 35 million people die from NCDs each year, and 14 million of these deaths could be averted or delayed.

According to union health ministry estimates, every 10 seconds two new cases of diabetes are reported in the country.

Gupta informed that the government needs to take an active step about the Bill on Chronic Disease and should initiate it at the summit. “The government needs to address NCD as a huge problem and should take steps for drafting a bill for chronic disease on the lines of something like mental health bill since the problem is also very vast. The reason why we want the Government to discuss about the bill as at the summit is because once included in the action plan the UN will do a check on the progress of it and will not let it be just a promise on paper,” he added.

Among the other demands DMAI wants the government to initiate is public private partnership in the country to tackle the issue of chronic disease in the country. “Many of the governments initiatives just happen on a pilot scale and end up benefiting very few. However, if the private companies are involved in these projects it would be conducted on a larger scale benefiting the society but most importantly the whole project will also be accountable which is not the case now.”