Key issues surrounding the management of non-communicable diseases including the management of diabetes post COVID-19 among developing countries with a specific focus on Bangladesh

There continues to be a high and growing prevalence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), which is a concern. Currently, over 41 million people globally die each year from NCDs, and growing, with the greatest shift in disease burden, including mortality, from communicable diseases to NCDs among African and South Asian countries (Khanam et al., 2019). For instance in Bangladesh, deaths due to NCDs increased from 43.4% of total deaths in 2000 to 66.9% in 2015 (Rawal et al., 2019). It has been estimated by 2025 that nearly 30% of adults globally will have hypertension estimated at 1.5 billion people (Khanam et al., 2019, Legido-Quigley et al., 2019), with these figures likely to be an under-estimate with the recent COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdown measures (Ahmed et al., 2020, Kluge et al., 2020, Mistry et al., 2021), further increasing morbidity and mortality. There are similar concerns with patients with diabetes. Globally in 2019, there was an estimated 463 million people worldwide with diabetes mellitus (Chan et al., 2021, Liu et al., 2020), with these rates expected to grow unless addressed (Godman et al., 2021a). However, the International Diabetes Federation recorded higher rates globally at 537 million adults aged between 20 and 70 years, i.e., approximately one in ten adults, with this figure expected to rise of 643 million by 2030 unless addressed (IDF, 2021a)