Toastmasters Competent Communicator Manual Speech 7 – Research your topic
NCD – do you have any?
Does anybody have NCD in this room? No? Okay… there is a chance that some of you in this room don’t know what it is right?
- Well, before that, let me understand how many of you actually know what NCD is? Can anyone tell me what NCD is?
- How many of you at least made an attempt to find it through Google or any other sources? Thank you! You made my day. My purpose of this speech is achieved.
Excellent! That makes this topic very important to all of us.
WHO defines NCDs refers to Non-communicable diseases – Diseases that don’t get spread from one to another. NCDs are chronic diseases that are either inherited or gradually developed from within. The four main types of non-communicable diseases are cardiovascular, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes.
Now someone might ponder, what’s so special about that? Let me tell you, today, NCDs are the leading cause of adult mortality worldwide. Do you want to know to what extent?
- Globally more than 36 million people die from NCDs (63% of Global deaths) in a year
- In low and middle income countries like India, more than 90% of premature deaths from NCDs
- India is one of the biggest victims for NCDs as they cause 53% of pre-mature mortality in India. A report says in 2030 India is projected to be ranked only after china in most number of deaths.
- What is more sad is, in Rural India – which constitutes of 70% of the country’s population, every 6 out of 10 deaths are due to NCDs
These diseases are driven by forces like ageing, rapid urbanization, and globalization of unhealthy lifestyles. Major risk factors for these NCDs are raised blood pressure, cholesterol, tobacco use, unhealthy diet, less physical inactivity, alcohol consumption, and obesity.
Fortunately, many of these NCDs are preventable or curable over a period of time… if detected or diagnosed at an early stage. If only we reduce NCDs mortality by 2% every year, an economic growth of 1% will be achieved over a decade.
But, how much effort we are taking to do this? I will give you details from a study on this. What could be an cost-effective solution?
Numerous studies have been conducted about NCDs and they are now well understood. Have quoted here some of the studies I referred to have an understanding.
World Health Organization has taken strenuous efforts in creating awareness and took action by working with health ministries across different countries with a standard, scientific approach. The social and economic burden of this disease is so high that in 2011, even an UN Summit on NCD was conducted to arrive at a global action plan. That is just a 2nd UN Summit in all these years that focused on a health issue.
What is needed is Action from this awareness.
When I wanted to test how much of what I learned and shared so far is true, I picked a small study that was conducted only last month in a selected villages in Krishnagiri District in Tamilnadu. Let us quickly spend the rest of time in observing the findings.
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Then I went on using visual screenshots from a powerpoint I prepared for this meeting, which had findings from my study titled “Social Marketing Intervention as a cure for Non-communicable diseases in selected rural villages of Krishnagiri District, Tamilnadu“.
