The Global Week of Action on NCDs is a good opportunity to write about our latest initiative, which is funded by the NCD Alliance’s Solidarity Fund for NCDs and COVID-19. This fund is helping members around the world to make the case for prioritising and investing in NCDs as part of an equitable Covid-19 response and recovery. At the UK Working Group on NCDs, we will contribute to this goal by bringing together two particularly important aspects of addressing NCDs: first, by tapping into the deep understanding of the need for action that lived experience brings,* and, secondly, by addressing the impact on global health and NCDs of the recent swingeing cuts by the UK government to overseas development assistance. These ODA cuts are frightening in their extent – ratcheting down from 0.7% of GDP to just 0.5% (coming, of course, on top of a contraction of GDP due to Covid-19). It is a broken promise by the government, which prior to the last general election had committed to maintaining the 0.7% level – and will have far-reaching consequences across myriad areas of development, including health.

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