The map presents a high level oversight of the global burden of non-communicable disease (NCDs), and how it has evolved over the course of the past two decades. This period has been marked by rapid economic growth among developing nations and improvements in medicine and public health that have had a significant impact on the fight against infectious diseases. The world is now turning its attention towards the fight against NCDs, largely chronic diseases associated with lifestyle choices and ageing.

Utilising publicly available population health data from the World Health Organization and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, the map depicts the burden of disease with focus on five major NCDs: cardiovascular disease, chronic respiratory disease, cancer, diabetes and mental illness, in addition to the five primary risk factors (mainly lifestyle behaviours) that heavily impact premature mortality rates globally: tobacco, air pollution, alcohol, physical inactivity, poor nutrition. We also focus on seven countries for comparison: Brazil, China, France, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and USA. Guidance on how to use the NCD Heat Map can be found here.

The following amendments have been made to the final DALY data to ensure accuracy of the colour scale applied to the above heat map 2015:

Respiratory disease: Excludes Papua New Guinea which represents (4,500 DALYs per 100,000)

Diabetes: Excludes Fiji (6,320 DALYs per 100,000), Kiribati (3,152 per 100,000), Marshall Islands (4,695 per 100,000), Mauritius (3,900 per 100,000), and Trinidad and Tobago (3,973 per 100,000).

This map demonstrates the extent to which countries worldwide are experiencing the burden of NCDs today, measured in Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs).

This map demonstrates the extent to which the burden of NCDs has evolved over the past 25 years. Similar to the first visual, you have the ability scroll through the 6 disease categories, to see how the burden of NCDs has developed with varying degrees of severity.