Sub-Saharan Africa has one of the most rapidly growing incidences of non-communicable diseases (NCD) in the World yet this region suffers from a chronic shortage of doctors and capacity for managing these diseases is inadequate. In Uganda, non-physician providers also called clinical officers are rendering chronic HIV care with very good outcomes and they have become an integral part of the district health services and rural health centers. They play a critical role in patient assessment, disease management, triage and referrals and very often under take minor surgical procedures. We hypothesized that task shifting and training these clinical officers in chronic disease management may be one potential intervention to build a sustainable capacity in dealing with this worsening burden of NCD.