The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were placed in the pages of history amid several other remarkable global initiatives of the United Nations (UN), as the timeframe for achievement of these targets got over in 2015.
In 2000, the leaders of 189 countries signed this historic millennium declaration at the United Nations Millennium Summit for improving the lives of the world’s poorest people. Eight MDGs, were agreed upon by its members, each one supported by 21 specific, measurable targets and more than 60 indicators with clear deadlines, as a concerted global movement in this direction. The eight goals spanned across the areas of poverty alleviation, providing universal primary education, ensuring gender equality, preventing child mortality, meeting maternal health needs, protecting the environment and entering various global partnerships, with a target achievement date of 2015.
Did the glass remain ‘half-full’ or ‘half-empty’?
At the end of 2015 the UN reportedly called the MDGs ‘the most successful anti-poverty movement in history’. However, it could probably be a matter of looking at this glass either as ‘half-full’ or ‘half-empty’.
An interesting article published in the international daily ‘The Guardian’ on July 06, 2015, highlighted some hits and misses of MDGs from the global perspective.
Globally, several goals of the MDGs have not been made for various reasons. Focusing on health-related areas, I find, though the child mortality rate has reduced by more than half over the past two and a half decades from 90 to 43 deaths per 1,000 live births, its MDG target of an expected decline by two thirds could not be achieved. Similarly, the global maternal mortality ratio despite falling by nearly half, was far short of its aim of a two-thirds reduction. Likewise, despite the reduction of the number of new HIV infections by around 40 percent between 2000 and 2013, its MDG goal of halting and beginning to reverse the spread of HIV/Aids by 2015 has not been met.
The overall status in India:
According to the United Nations in India, in the above focus areas, the country has made some progress in reducing its under-five mortality rate, which declined from 125 per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 49 per 1,000 live births in 2013; maternal mortality rate also declined from 437 per 100,000 live births in 1990-91 to 167 in 2009.
India recorded significant progress in reducing the prevalence of HIV and AIDS across different types of high-risk categories, with adult prevalence reducing from 0.45 percent in 2002 to 0.27 percent in 2011. However, a quarter of global TB cases still occur in India with nearly 2.2 million people are diagnosed with the disease annually, and an estimated 220,000 die as a result.
MDGs and India’s achievements:
Coming now to target versus achievements, the Millennium Development Goals India Country Report 2015 released by the Ministry of Statistics & Program Implementation (MoSPI) in February 2015, states that India had put considerable emphasis on all the MDGs with significant progress. Although the nation could meet targets of some of these well ahead of the 2015 deadline, overall, only six of the 18 targets adopted as part of the eight goals in 2000 have been fully met. However, according to another report brought out by the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, India has met only four of the eight MDGs.
As per Sample Registration System 2013, though the overall reduction of Under 5 Child Mortality Rate (U5MR) was nearly 60 percent happened during 1990 to 2013, India had missed this target.
Similar were the performances for a reduction in the Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) and the proportion of one year old children immunized against measles and improving the Maternal Morality Ratio (MMR). However, the prevalence of HIV among pregnant women aged 15-24 years showed a declining trend and incidence of Malaria also came down. Thus, it appears that the progress made and the achievements recorded in India against MDG targets are indeed a mixed bag.
The same question, therefore, logically follows for India too: Has the glass become ‘half-full’, or remained half-empty post MDG efforts?
MDGs break ground for ‘Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)’:
The MDGs comprising of eight goals to eradicate extreme poverty, were indeed a laudable concerted global initiative of the United Nations. It could reportedly bring over a billion people out of extreme poverty. According to ‘United Nations (2015): The Millennium Development Goals Report’, during the period of 1990 to 2015, extreme poverty fell in developing countries from 47 to 14 percent. Similarly, the proportion of undernourished people fell by almost half, with almost similar decline in the child and maternal mortality rate. Nevertheless, communicable diseases, gender/income inequalities and striking disparities between rural and urban areas continued to persist with the world’s poor remaining overwhelmingly concentrated in several areas.
Thus, learning valuable lessons and significantly benefitting from them, MDGs broke ground for the next logical global initiative in this genre. As the time-frame for implementation of MDGs got over in 2015, the global leaders on the same platform of the United Nations followed it through with the newly developed ‘Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)’ in the same year.
While aiming to make the outcomes of the new drive more sustainable with a focus on the environmental goals, SDGs did not altogether jettison some of the unfinished agenda of MDGs – mainly for continuity. Unlike MDGs, SDGs are targeted primarily to the developing, least developed and poorest countries. Nevertheless, all member countries of the UN require participating, fund and actively contribute in achieving SDGs targets, no matter how developed they are.
While MDGs had only 8 goals, 21 targets and 63 indicators, SDGs are a set of 17 goalsand 169 targets that all 193 UN Member States, including India have committed to achieve between 2016 and 2030. Importantly, though MDG targets were adopted in 2002 and got over in 2015, its effective time span for achievement was of 25 years, as the baseline data used were for the year 1990 with some subsequent revisions. Whereas the baseline for SDGs starts from 2015 estimates, which may be revised to actual figures as and when these are made available.
Health goals in SDG:
Health has a central place in SDG 3 to ‘ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for ...............
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