NCDs, Cardiovascular & Population Health

Overview

Non-communicable diseases become difficult to control when care is organized around episodes rather than continuity. Hypertension and diabetes may remain undetected for years; people who are diagnosed may face repeated costs, medication interruptions, limited counselling or long distances to care; and health facilities may lack the workforce, information systems or financing mechanisms needed for sustained management.

WEMA's NCD work therefore connects population evidence with implementation. It asks what patterns of risk are visible across communities, why diagnosis and control remain uneven, and which combinations of task-sharing, digital follow-up, patient support, financing and health-system redesign can make chronic care more reliable.

The result is a Theme concerned with trajectories rather than snapshots: how risk accumulates, how people enter care, how treatment is sustained, how systems learn, and how interventions can move from promising components to scalable models without losing equity or feasibility.