March 2001 Insights Health Issue #1

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Sites for sore eyes

A good starting point for information on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in developing countries is the World Health Organisation (WHO) at www.who.int/ncd, which includes resources for planning NCD interventions and lots of useful links. Similarly, PAHO's site, www.paho.org, has a wealth of relevant material in the section on disease prevention and control. This includes epidemiological data and details of PAHO's NCD programme. The Global Cardiovascular Information Database, www.cvdinfobase.ic.gc.ca is an excellent resource for epidemiological data on stroke and cardiovascular disease incidence, mortality and risk factors.

More information on the size of the global NCD burden is available in WHO fact sheets, www.who.int/int-fs/en, from the World Bank, www.worldbank.org, and the World Heart Federation, www.worldheart.org, with a summary of the Global Burden of Disease Study: www.worldheart.org/heartbeat/july97/p4.html.

Several sites, including Afronets, http://users.harare.iafrica.com/~gtz-hsr/afronets.htm, and ProCOR, www.procor.org, provide information on health research and development for NCDs in developing countries as well as a forum for discussing relevant issues.

For information on ongoing work into the causes, prevention and control of NCDs, Pakistan's National Heart Foundation's site, www.heartfile.org (in English and Urdu), is well worth a look, as are the (WHO) African and South-East Asian regional sites: www.whoafr.org/cdp and http://w3.whosea.org/ncd.

For guidance on the development of NCD interventions, a book from the Global Forum for Health Research CVD initiative (www.ichealth.org) 'Control of cardiovascular diseases in developing countries' is available online at www.nap.edu/books/0309061377/html. The websites of national organisations for individual diseases are also a useful source of information, including www.hyp.ac.uk/bhsinfo for high blood pressure and www.diabetes.org.uk for diabetes. Finally, for the latest international guidelines for the prevention and treatment of NCDs, search the National Guideline Clearing House site: www.guideline.gov.

Louise Hayes
Department of Diabetes
University of Newcastle upon Tyne Medical School
Newcastle
NE2 4HH
UK
T: +44 (0)191 222 5871
F: +44 (0)191 222 0723
louise.hayes@ncl.ac.uk