"It was a stroke of genius for the major NCD NGOs to form the Alliance. What they have done together in such a short space of time is nothing short of a miracle," Sir George Alleyne said to close the event organized by the NCD Alliance, on September 17 in New York.
"When the history of these times is written and the credits given for the High Level Meeting as the end of phase one, and for the foundations of this beginning, the name of the NCD Alliance will be writ large."
The NCD Alliance is a civil society movement against premature death and preventable illnesses, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, chronic respiratory disease, and diabetes.
The purpose of the meeting was to brief nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) about next week's United Nations High-Level Meeting on Noncommunicable Diseases, being held Sept. 19 and 20 in New York.
NCDs—including cancer, diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular diseases and chronic respiratory diseases—are the leading causes of death around the world. In the Americas, three out of four people suffer from at least one of these diseases. Some 3.9 million people die each year from NCDs, 1.5 million of them before the age of 70.