Health in the Millennium Development Goals

The report, Health and the Millennium Development Goals, presents data on progress on the health goals and targets and looks beyond the numbers to analyse why improvements in health have been slow and to suggest what must be done to change this. The report points to weak and inequitable health systems as a key obstacle, including particularly a crisis in health personnel and the urgent need for sustainable health financing.

Building up and strengthening health systems is vital if more progress is to be made towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a new report. Unless urgent investments are made in health systems, current rates of progress will not be sufficient to meet most of the Goals.

Key Recommendations of Health in the Millennium Development Goals:

• To strengthen health systems and ensure they are equitable.
• To ensure that health is prioritized within overall development and economic policies.
• To develop health strategies that respond to the diverse and evolving needs of countries.
• To mobilize needed resources for health in poor countries.
• To improve the quality of health data.

Health and the MDGs: background

In September 2000, the largest-ever gathering of Heads of State ushered in the new millennium by adopting the UN Millennium Declaration. The Declaration, endorsed by 189 countries, was then translated into a roadmap setting out
goals to be reached by 2015.
The eight MDGs build on agreements made at United Nations conferences in the 1990s and represent commitments to
reduce poverty and hunger, and to tackle ill-health, gender inequality, lack of education, lack of access to clean water and environmental degradation.
The MDGs are framed as a compact, which recognizes the contribution that developed countries can make through trade, development assistance, debt relief, access to essential medicines and technology transfer.

Health and the MDGs
“Improvements in health are essential if progress is to be made with the other Millennium Development Goals”
— Dr LEE Jong-wook — Director-General, WHO

Three out of eight goals, eight of the 16 targets and 18 of the 48 indicators relate directly to health. Health is also an important contributor to several other goals. The significance of the MDGs lies in the linkages between them: they are a mutually reinforcing framework to improve overall human development.

The MDGs provide a vision of development in which health and education are squarely at the centre. Since their adoption, no-one has been able to say that development is just about economic growth.
The MDGs do not say everything that needs to be said about health and development. They say nothing about the importance of effective health systems which are essential to the achievement of all health goals, about reproductive health or noncommunicable diseases.
We therefore have to understand the MDGs as a form of shorthand for some of the most important outcomes that development should achieve:

• Fewer women dying in childbirth;
• More children surviving the early years of life;
• Dealing with the catastrophe of HIV/AIDS;
• Making sure people have access to life-saving drugs;
• Better health – in all its forms – making a major contribution to the reduction of poverty.

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Demikian isi dari latar belakang MDGs 2015 yang kita kenal untuk memakmurkan dunia itu. Tapi nyatanya, di negara kita, jangankan MDGs atau membicarakan bagaimana pengentasan kemiskinan dan pelayanan kesehatan saat ini, perihal kecil dan sepele saja, semisal harga pupuk dan BBM , telah bukan main mematikan rakyat sendiri. Birokrat kita sudah tidak lagi memiliki ¨sense of sosial responsibilities¨, menjadi tuli dan sedungu-dungunya. Mau di kemanakan negeri subur dengan banyak hutang ini?

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