Addressing the Burden of Non-communicable Diseases: Saudi Arabia's Challenges in Achieving Vision 2030

Albejaidi, F.; Nair, K. S.

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) pose critical challenges in achieving Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030. This paper provides an overview of NCDs in Saudi Arabia and identifies various critical issues and challenges in reducing the burden of NCDs. All relevant data for this paper was extracted from existing published literature in various database including Medline, Scopus, ScienceDirect and PubMed. Google Scholar search engine was used to identify papers and reports on relevant literature published after the year 2000. NCDs account for about 73% of all deaths in Saudi Arabia. Deaths due to cardiovascular diseases account for 37% of all deaths, cancers 10%, diabetes mellitus 3% and other NCDs cause 20% of all deaths. Economic costs of NCDs likely to increase with the undesirable life style of youths and increasing share of old population. Further, the shortage of local health workforce, lack of primary health care focus and covid-19 pandemic are likely to affect the government efforts to prevent and control NCDs. Ministry of Health (MOH) needs to play a catalyst role in raising awareness of population through multi-sectoral linkages and policies to reduce the exposure to NCD risk factors. There is a need to review all relevant policy documents to ensure consistency of these policies with prevention and control measures of NCDs.