Defeat-NCD Partnership Face-to-Face Board consultation

Ladies and gentlemen,

It is a pleasure to be with you this evening. Let me first of all thank Dr. Mukesh Kapila and his team for bringing us together tonight.

A strength of the Defeat-NCD Partnership - you know this well - is the expertise it assembled. And in light of the expertise in the room today, the contribution I want to make is not to offer the specialist’s perspective, but rather to take a step back, to take a more general view.

̶ A view that looks at NCDs not as an isolated issue in itself, but as one piece in a large mosaic.
̶ A view that sees defeating NCDs not just as an outcome, but a key driver of progress - central to peace; critical to prosperity; and essential for equality.

Because that is what the 2030 Agenda is all about: to make us look beyond the silo of our expertise by helping us recognize how every challenge we face - and every measure we take - has consequences that go further than we may realize at first sight.

Think about what you as health professionals are trying to achieve. Eliminate disease, treat illness. All true. But wouldn’t you agree that just as peace is about more than simply the absence of conflict, so too is health not just about the lack of illness? Rather, it’s about creating the conditions for well-being, both physical and mental, for every person everywhere.

But to get there, we need more than medicines and vaccinations, important though they are.

To get there, we also need a clean environment, because polluted air causes an alarming 7 million premature deaths each year.

Reducing carbon emission, curbing climate change, and defeating non-communicable diseases are therefore all part and parcel of one and the same effort.

In fact, and this is a key reason why I so readily agreed to become the Honorary President of the Defeat-NCD Partnership, NCDs are in many ways a fulcrum on which much of the 2030 Agenda’s success will turn.

With an increasingly globalized world, longer life expectancy, a rapidly changing climate and increasing levels of urbanization, we are witnessing shifts – demographic and otherwise – that see the burden of NCDs rising in all nations.

Today, for the first time, more people are dying from heart disease, diabetes, and cancer than are dying from malaria, pneumonia or dysentery.

I think it’s fair to say that there is no one in the world today who does not at least know one family member, friend, neighbour or colleague suffering - or even dying - from NCDs.

The biggest prize we pay is in millions of premature deaths - millions of men and women killed in the prime of their lives, the vast majority of them in developing countries.

But the costs extend further, not only to the people affected, but to vicious cycles of poverty that impoverish families and entire communities; to national budgets and health systems that cannot cope; to the whole global economy that fails to realize its potential.

So reason one why I joined is rooted in my belief that NCDs are one of the defining challenges of our time.

And reason two is in the name of the initiative itself, and that’s “Partnership”.

It sounds straightforward in theory, even banal, but it’s practical implications are hugely significant: partnership is the only way forward.

Partnership across countries and regions; across actors and sectors.

The other day a journalist asked me about the risks of partnering with the private sector. My response was simply this: the biggest risk lies in not partnering with the private sector.

That’s not to deny there are risks. Conflicts of interest between serving the public good and delivering return on equity for shareholders; attempts by corporations to “blue-wash” their brand by association with the UN. And it’s no secret: Many of the biggest causes of NCDs – like tobacco, alcohol, sugary drinks, and junk food – have powerful industries working on their sides.

And yet, it’s downright ludicrous to think that we can defeat NCDs without - much less against - the private sector.

Which is why we need to find a way of partnering that leverages the strength of business, that stays true to our values, and, above all, that delivers for the people.

And that’s where I see the powerful contribution our partnership can make.

To be more agile and nimble, more flexible and imaginative in our approach by being outside of traditional structures but still connected to them; to harness our broad convening power to build an alliance with unparalleled firepower.

The success this Partnership has had in getting off the ground over these past nine months is encouraging - and it shows there was real demand for exactly that kind of initiative.

It’s no accident, by the way, that it has enjoyed this success in Geneva. After all, it’s exactly the kind of broad-based collaboration and holistic thinking that is in the DNA of this city - and never more so since everyone started to get behind the 2030 Agenda.

That said, let’s not forget that where this partnership will really prove its worth will not be here, on the shores of Lake Geneva; it will be on the ground, in the field, with the people it was created to serve. Success will be determined by the direct impact on individual lives - as fundamental as preventing someone from dying because they could not buy insulin.

The partnership was created to turn words into action; to strip away the alibis; to scale up our fight against the biggest killer on the planet.

And I think we can today say we’re on the right path.

But I would also say that we can never be too ambitious.

Now, I was also asked to share some advice tonight.

And in as much I can do so without belabouring specifics, it would be this: be bolder.

One, be bolder in leadership: my personal philosophy of good leadership can be summed as follows: “do what is right and ask for forgiveness later”. If we don’t take risks; if we don’t accept and forgive failures; well then we simply won’t be able to get rid of that business-as-usual approach that bogged so many of our efforts in the past.

Two, be bolder in innovation: one strength of this partnership is its laser-sharp focus on country-level, field-based impacts. But at the same time, it recognizes that local impact is also achieved by tackling global, systemic constraints such as drug prices. Which is why the NCD Marketplace is exactly the kind of innovation that can make a meaningful difference.

And finally, be bolder, be louder in your engagement: NCDs account for two-thirds of all deaths, and yet, only two percent of international health funding to low and middle-income countries has been dedicated to preventing NCDs. This disconnect is incredible. To begin to fix it, we need to engage more aggressively - engage media, engage mayors, engage youth.

I say this often, but it strikes me as particularly true today: we have everything we need to succeed. We have the skills; we have the expertise; we even have the money. What we need now is a much greater political will from our leaders and, above all, to execute - and we need to do so at greater scale and at greater speed. In our case, the case of NCDs, lives literally depend on it.

Thank you.