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The World Health Organization has released a new report that says noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) — heart disease and stroke, cancer, diabetes and respiratory disease — now outnumber infectious diseases as the top killers globally.

Major risk factors that lead to NCDs are tobacco use, unhealthy diet, harmful use of alcohol, physical inactivity and air pollution, according to the report ‘Invisible numbers: The true extent of noncommunicable diseases and what to do about them’.

The report highlights the true scale of the threat of NCDs and also offers cost-effective and globally applicable interventions that can help save lives.

The NCD data portal shows the latest country-specific data, risk factors and policy implementation for 194 countries and demonstrates the real-life impact of these statistics. It allows the exploration of the data for the four NCDs and their main drivers and risk factors. The portal makes the patterns and trends in countries visible and allows comparison across countries or within geographical regions.

Along with mental health problems, NCDs cause nearly three-quarters of deaths in the world and kill 41 million people every year. To put that in perspective, every two seconds, one person under the age of 70 dies of an NCD.

Major risk factors that lead to NCDs are tobacco use, unhealthy diet, harmful use of alcohol, physical inactivity and air pollution. Eliminating these factors could prevent or delay significant ill health and many premature deaths from NCDs.

Only a handful of countries are on track to meet the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) on reducing early deaths from NCDs by 2030.

Image credit: iStock.com/Phynart Studio