Posts tagged Non-Communicable Diseases

Digital Health key to Maldives reducing premature chronic diseases deaths

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Abdulla Ahmed, Principal of Faafu Atoll Education Centre in Nilandhoo, Maldives, with some of the students participating in a pilot programme that has improved NCD awareness, screening, prevention and healthy-lifestyle practices. Photo Credit: © Courtesy Abdulla Ahmed

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 18.09.2026 (SciDev.Net): The Maldives has become the only country in South East Asia to meet the UN target for reducing premature deaths from non-communicable diseases (NCDs), such as cardiovascular disease, cancers, diabetes and chronic respiratory diseases.

Globally, NCDs account for roughly 74 per cent of all deaths, with millions of people dying prematurely before 70 years of age. Over 80 per cent of these premature deaths occur in low-and middle-income countries.

Strengthening digital connectivity and health workforce capacity, and investing in preventive health, has been central to the Maldives’ achievement, according to public health experts who say the approach could help other small island developing states (SIDS) curb the growing disease burden.

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Vivekananda Jha: Need to fix the system to ensure no one is excluded from the Right to Health

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By Neena Bhandari

A prolonged brush with the healthcare system during his high school years steered Vivekananda Jha towards medicine. Multiple visits to the doctors, uncertain diagnosis, rudimentary care and the prolonged physical, mental and financial stress of ailment, made him determined to pursue medicine as a career.

He grew up in Bihar, and graduated from the Patna Medical College, before moving to the prestigious Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) in Chandigarh to do his post-graduation in Internal Medicine and Nephrology.

“Nephrology offered the possibility of extending a patient’s life even after they had developed advanced end-stage organ failure by providing them with dialysis or kidney transplantation, whereas with other organs that was not the case in the late 1980’s”, says Dr Jha, who hails from a family of teachers, and so he is the only doctor “on-call” in their entire extended family.

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