Mike Bloomberg Explains NCDs and Why You Should Care

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(low ambient music)
- [interviewer ] Do you know what NCD stands for?
- NCDs?
Um.
- Um.
- NCD.
- NCDs.
- Can I guess what NCD stands for?
National--
- Cancer or catastrophic?
- I think the D stands for diseases, correct?
- Um.
- Erm.
(snickers)
- I don't know. (giggles)
- I'm not sure.
- I have no idea.
- Not a clue.
- I'm the World Health Organization's
Global Ambassador for noncommunicable diseases.
An NCD stands for noncommunicable disease.
It's something that you can't catch,
you get it from something else.
Obesity, heart and respiratory problems, diabetes, cancer.
Those things don't come from somebody else
they come from things acting on you
or that you develop in you body.
An unhealthy diet, pollution in the air,
these are things that we can do something about
and so government really can help people prevent
noncommunicable diseases.
- [Interviewer] How have NCDs affected people you know?
- [Interviewer] How have NCDs affected people you know? - When my father, he passed away,
- When my father, he passed away,
he had sugar type two diabetes.
His toe was amputated.
- When I was 25 my father had a massive coronary.
- My dad died from emphysema.
I really don't think they knew any better
when they started smoking, how bad it would be for them.
- My grandma, she had the diabetes.
- My grandfather had heart disease.
If he had known there were warning signs,
I think that, that would've definitely helped
his quality of life.
- Noncommunicable diseases, people think they're
inevitable, they're not inevitable.
We can prevent most of them.
We can prevent most of them. Shockingly, while two thirds of deaths in low and middle
Shockingly, while two thirds of deaths in low and middle
income countries are noncommunicable diseases,
they get only one percent of the funding.
- One percent, okay, wow.
- That's definitely not a good percentage at all.
- That seems awfully small for the percentage
of people who are dying from these things.
- Why is it so low though?
I don't understand that, what do you do to change that?
- We work with the World Health Organization
to advocate for better laws and policies that will
reduce NCDs and one major initiative that we're
involved with is getting 50 cities to work together
to implement proven things that will save lives.
Our foundation focuses on meeting unmet needs
and when we got started,
there was not a lot of people paying attention or
funding work on NCDs, but we knew from experience
that combating tobacco and obesity in New York City
could just save millions of lives
with just a few interventions.
Health Department surveys show that smoking among
adult in New Yorkers has decreased by 31% since 2002,
and smoking among teenagers has also dropped dramatically.
We implemented public health reforms and bans
on smoking in public places
despite a lot of intense industry opposition.
- I believe that initiatives like that
would definitely make for a better, healthier
place to work and to live.
- If you have a body of law,
if you have a body of policies in place
I think you go a longer way to do that.
- To have programs and since it's right there
Within reach of the community.
- Increase public service announcements.
- Potentially the whole world could really benefit
from that kind of action.
- For the first time in history,
noncommunicable diseases kill more people than
communicable diseases around the world,
and unless we do something to encourage healthy choices
and convince people to take care of themselves,
this problems only gonna get worse.
Nevertheless, these are tough causes and governments
have to get help from private philanthropy to take
on the private sector that doesn't want this done.

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Mike Bloomberg Explains NCDs and Why You Should Care

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