Washington, D.C., April 27, 2017.- Representatives of national programs on noncommunicable diseases (NDCs) from 18 countries in the Non-Latin Caribbean attended a Country Capacity Survey (CCS) Workshop on April 26 and 27 to review the global and regional Noncommunicable Diseases (NCDs) commitments and the Accountability Framework on NCDs. Furthermore, focal points of each Ministry of Health were able to conduct a workshop validation process of the CCS 2017, revising and completing all of the CCS modules.
The CCS is a self-administrated questionnaire that countries in the Americas complete every two years and assesses the country's capacity for responding to noncommunicable diseases. This serves as a source of information to report progress on the implementation of the National, Regional and Global action plans to control and prevent noncommunicable diseases and risk factors.
This information is critical to know how countries in the Region of the Americas are advancing to tackle NCDs and their risk factors in order to achieve a reduction in premature mortality due to NCDs. The data gathered through this process will be also used to report progress at the 3rd UN High Level meeting in May 2018.
At the meeting, PAHO representatives and country focal points discussed challenges when answering the questionnaire and gathering the supporting documents as well as recommendations for future survey implementation. This exercise also served to countries to review their status regarding to the United Nations 10 Progress Indicators.
One of the conclusions of the meeting was that despite the fact that the Region of the Americas is making progress but countries need to speed up the implementation of the Best Buys interventions to overcome the burden of NCDs.
