The defining and ongoing innovations of this age - biotechnology, the computer, the Internet - give us a chance we've never had before to end extreme poverty and end death from preventable disease.

The September high-level meeting on noncommunicable diseases is an opportunity that the health sector must seize.

For NCDs, we cannot afford to miss opportunities for prevention, for early diagnosis, for counselling aimed at behavioural change, or for community-based approaches that improve health literacy.