SIDS 2023 Conferences on NCD’s and Mental Health

Barbados, 18 January 2023 -- The Government of Barbados, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Pan American Health Organization held a high-level technical meeting on noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) and mental health with Small Island Developing States (SIDS). The discussions focused on progress, challenges, and opportunities to scale up multi-sector actions on NCDs and mental health and set out recommendations to scale up actions that save and improve lives.

Barbados is co-hosting a Ministerial conference of SIDS on the prevention and control of NCDs and mental health in June 2023. This represents a critical step towards building and pursuing a collective vision and course of action for accelerating progress towards SDG target 3.4 on NCDs and mental health and SDG target 3.8 on universal health coverage (UHC) in preparation for the second High-level meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on Universal Health Coverage in 2023 and the 4th high-level meeting on NCDs in 2025.

The ministerial conference in 2023 will be organized in response to paragraph 75(e) of resolution A/RES/69/15 (SIDS Accelerated Modalities of Action [SAMOA] Pathway), which includes a commitment to “enable cooperation among Small Island Developing States (SIDS) on diseases by using existing international and regional forums to convene joint biennial meetings of ministers of health and other relevant sectors to respond in particular to NCDs