Implication of the Seoul declaration on public health of India

Considering the growing burden of NCDs, in Asia, the Seoul Health Declaration [1] on NCD prevention and control was proposed, whereby an emphasis was placed on the need for a "multi-sectoral, whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to stem the "rising tide of lifestyle-related diseases" by providing strong and sustained political support for NCDs prevention and control, ensuring a supportive government policy environment and a coordinating mechanism to mainstream the response to NCDs, reducing the common modifiable risk factors, strengthening and integrating health systems to ensure that NCDs prevention and control is part of a funded, coherent, balanced, realistic and comprehensive health planning process, prioritizing human and financial resources and infrastructure to ensure equitable coverage of evidence-based NCDs prevention and control interventions and providing integrated, but practical monitoring and accountability systems and a small number of quantified, timed targets and indicator to assess progress nationally. Supporting, and strengthening evidence-based prevention outlined in World Health Organization (WHO) global strategy-restrict access to means of self-harm/suicide, develop policies to reduce harmful use of alcohol as a component of suicide prevention, assist and encourage the media to follow responsible reporting practices of suicide, gatekeeper training, identification and treatment of mental disorders, management of persons who attempted suicide or who are at risk, monitoring and evaluating intervention should be evaluated-in order to protect those at risk from suicide. According to expert opinion the number of people with diabetes in India is likely to rise to 69.9 million by 2025 and to 79.4 million by 2030. [7] The modifiable behavioral risk factors such as dietary habits, physical activity levels, tobacco, and alcohol abuse and high-stress levels precipitate the development of physiological risk factors such as obesity, raised blood pressure, deranged blood glucose and dyslipidemia leading to the ultimate progression to disease outcomes like CHD, stroke, diabetes, etc.