Armed conflict and related violence, including terrorism and one-sided violence, has profound effects on people's health and lives. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between deaths due to terrorism, civil war and one-sided violence from 1994-2000 and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) occurring in 2002 attributable to all causes and specific communicable and noncom...

Perspectives Noncommunicable diseases pose an increasingly high burden of disease that threatens economic and social development , yet cost-effective health interventions exist. World leaders recognized the compelling case for action with the declaration at the United Nations high-level meeting on noncommunicable diseases in September 2011. Since that meeting, the World Health Organization (WHO...

In its 60 years of pursuing modern developmental goals, Bhutan has done remarkably well. However, the country now faces a triple burden of diseases – communicable diseases, noncommunicable diseases, and accidents and injuries. Among the risk factors for noncommunicable diseases, hypertension is perhaps the most important cause of an increasing number of strokes, heart attacks and chronic kidney...

The 18th WHO Global Tuberculosis Annual Report indicates that there were an estimated 8.6 million incident cases of tuberculosis (TB) in 2012, which included 2.9 million women and 530,000 children. TB caused 1.3 million deaths including 320,000 human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected people; three-quarters of deaths occurred in Africa and Southeast Asia. With one-third of the world's popula...

INTRODUCTION Noncommunicable diseases are increasing in developing countries, exacerbated by growing urbanization. We examined the experiences and perceptions about noncommunicable diseases of people who migrated from rural areas to urban Cape Town, South Africa. METHODS We conducted a qualitative study in an impoverished periurban township that has a noncommunicable disease prevention progra...

Health promotion is becoming a noticeable policy in both developed and developing countries facing a burden of both communicable and noncommunicable diseases. This paper discusses the focus of health promotion policy, financing arrangements and the perspectives of social health insurance to fund health promotion. The population health status in Japan is among the highest in the world despite an...

In this month's editorial, PLOS Medicine Editorial Board member Anushka Patel and Ruth Webster discuss how applying rules for drug efficacy trials can impede pragmatic trials of interventions for noncommunicable diseases.

The scale-up of HIV services in lower-income countries has created the first large-scale continuity care program in many settings. Although HIV and chronic noncommunicable diseases are thought of as quite different challenges and tend to be "siloed" throughout the health system, the availability of treatment has transformed HIV into a chronic condition-and HIV programs have developed the system...