There is a serious humanitarian crisis emerging in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) [the so-called developing countries] across the world. The cause is a dramatic increase in the prevalence of chronic, non-communicable diseases. In most of these countries, there is already an unbearable burden of infectious diseases. The inability of governments and populations to effectively deal with the double burden of chronic, non-communicable diseases and the high prevalence of infectious diseases, is likely to result in a significant humanitarian crisis.

Immediate tailor-made interventions are required to avert this crisis. The prevailing system of unsustainable, charitable handouts to these communities will likely be ineffective in dealing with this emerging crisis. As a matter of fact, the global community needs to abandon the concept of charitable handouts for health interventions in LMICs. A more efficient and sustainable approach is to provide these communities with the capacity to implement tailor-made interventions.

Capacity-building that is based on community participatory models has been shown to be highly effective for health assessments and interventions. Affected communities are at the core of the complex adaptive systems that affect disease prevalence, hence empowering the communities (through capacity building) is likely to result in an efficient and sustainable decrease in the incidence of these threatening diseases.