Global Diabetes Compact : World Health Organization’s new roadmap to prevent and control diabetes and cardiovascular disease

Objectives

To catalyse an accelerated response towards diabetes and cardiovascular disease utilising the momentum established with the Global Diabetes Compact (GDC) globally and in the African region with a focus on Uganda and Ghana.

Approach

The project seeks to catalyse the GDC roll-out following WHO’s widely promoted launch in April 2021 on the centenary of insulin discovery. The GDC is backed by two consecutive and strong World Health Assembly (WHA) resolutions on diabetes (2021, 2022) incl. endorsement of the first-ever global treatment targets.

The GDC aspires to build a new global vision and unity towards diabetes through a composition of six workstreams: 1. Access to essential medicines, 2. Technical products, 3. Health promotion and literacy, 4. Country support, 5. Research and innovation, 6. Governance, strategy and partnership. WDF’s support will focus on workstreams 2, 4 and 6, with different GDC partners committing to other workstreams.

WDF’s support is structured with three impact areas which are interconnected each with specific sub-goals and activities, as per the overall GDC work plan, and stratified across the three levels of project implementation i.e. global, regional (focusing on the SSA region) and national (focusing on Uganda and Ghana), as follows:
• Impact area 1: Institutionalisation of the GDC seeking to achieve a permanently strengthened prioritisation of diabetes and cardiovascular disease (CVD) within the WHO.
• Impact area 2: Mobilisation and partnerships in the framework of the GDC seeking to advance political and budgetary prioritisation of diabetes and CVD across the SSA region.
• Impact area 3: Country-level implementation in Uganda and Ghana seeking to showcase these two countries as ‘role models’ of the GDC and good practices for a comprehensive and sustainable response to diabetes and CVD. The approach is based on WHO’s building blocks for health system strengthening incl. the WHO-PEN/HEARTS guideline packages.

Expected results

• Country-level capacity building targets: Uganda: 120 health facilities reached across four districts and with at least 1,200 HCPs trained; Ghana: 210 health facilities reached across 36 districts and with at least 3,000 HCPs trained.