Next Wednesday, 16 June 2021, the NCD Alliance is hosting a South-East Asia and Western Pacific joint regional multistakeholder dialogue on noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) and building back better after COVID-19. The dialogue is open to all stakeholders from the region, including people living with NCDs and actors from civil society, government, multilateral institutions, and the private sector.

The dialogue will take stock of progress on NCDs, and challenges faced in both the South-East Asia and the Western Pacific regions in the current COVID-19 context. It will explore the role different stakeholders can play in adopting people-centred approaches and highlight successful initiatives that have put people first and created social impact for communities and organisations.

The discussions will feed into a broad consultative process that will contribute towards a Global Charter on Meaningful Involvement of People Living with NCDs.

The South-East Asia and Western Pacific joint regional dialogue, held with the support of Takeda and Access Accelerated, is the penultimate in a series of dialogues that have taken place in all World Health Organization (WHO) regions. The final dialogue will take place in Eastern Mediterranean will take place on 22 June.

You can register here!

Speakers include:

• Dr. Monika Arora, President-Elect NCD Alliance, Executive Director HRIDAY (Secretariat-Healthy India Alliance).
• M. Andrew Fela, Policy Consultant, Asian Development Bank. Board member of NCD Child, Leukaemia and Blood Cancer New Zealand, Diabetes New Zealand Foundation, Kidney Health New Zealand, New Zealand Bone Marrow Donor Registry, New Zealand.
• Dr. Saunthari Somasundaram, Chairperson, NCD Malaysia; President, The National Cancer Society of Malaysia, Malaysia.
• Ms. Jyotsna Govil, Member of Our Views Our Voices Advisory Committee, India.
• M. Margianta Surahman, Young Leader Consultant, UNICEF/YHP Programme, Indonesia.
• Dr. Hien Le, Programme Director, PATH, Vietnam.
• Ms. Michelle Erwee, Global Head, Access to Medicines, Takeda, Singapore.
• r. Vivekhand Jha, Executive Director, The George Institute for Global Health, India.
• Maria Fatima Garcia-Lorenzo, Philippine Association of Patient Organizations, the Philippines.
• M. Brandon Ah Tong, Head of Policy and Advocacy, Fred Hollows Foundation, Australia.

More to be announced soon.

To complement these meetings, the NCD Alliance is co-hosting a series of civil society-only meetings in each region. Our Views, Our Voices regional meetings. They will focus on building a shared understanding of meaningful involvement of people living with NCDs. To join these meetings, NCDA members are invited to nominate up to 4 representatives, including people living with NCDs, here.

This meeting will take place on  Thursday 17 June 2021 and is co-hosted by South-East Asia Regional NCD Alliance, NCD Malaysia and the Healthy India Alliance.