Commentary: Poverty and cardiovascular disease in India: do we need more evidence for action

It appears that some Western academics are still caught in a time warp, like Rip van Winkle. An argu-ment was advanced by a World Bank team in 1999, that any action to control non-communicable diseases (NCDs) would only help the rich and hurt the global poor by increasing health inequity.1 This has subsequently been refuted by many.2,3 Even the World Bank changed its stance in 2007, declaring that in ‘all countries and by any metric, NCDs account for a large enough share of the disease burden of the poor to merit serious policy response’.4 The United Nations political resolution on NCDs, in September 2011, also acknowledged that NCDs are imposing health and developmental burdens on the poor in low- and low-middle income countries.