The world is going through a huge health transition, where the problems of the 6bn people who live in emerging markets are increasingly the problems of the 1bn people in rich countries. For the first time in history, more people suffer from eating too many calories than too few. Improving global health is no longer primarily about combating infectious diseases.

On Thursday, Mike Bloomberg and I announced a task force on fiscal policy for health. We are bringing together fiscal policy, development and health leaders from around the globe, including ministers of finance, to address the enormous and growing health and economic burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in lower and middle income countries (LMICs). The hope is to identify underused fiscal policy tools to lighten that burden.

Given the human and economic toll, the prevention of non-communicable diseases — cancer, cardiovascular disease, chronic lung disease and diabetes — should be of great interest to us all. The statistics on the big three culprits are staggering: