Without urgent action now, lagging millennium health goals will be missed - UN

Many developing countries will not reach the health-related goals set by the United Nations Millennium Summit, such as slashing infant and maternal death rates, unless clear action is taken at once, followed by a concerted effort over the next 12 years, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank warned today.

Representatives of governments, donor and development agencies, UN agencies and recipient countries are meeting in Geneva today and tomorrow to assess progress so far towards meeting the health goals and to map out what needs to be done if the world is to stand a realistic chance of reaching them.

At the Summit in 2000, 189 States committed themselves to eight ambitious Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for improving the health and well-being of hundreds of millions of people in the developing world by 2015. Four of them relate to health: to reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters and child mortality by two-thirds, halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other infectious diseases, and improve access to safe drinking water and essential drugs.

"When these kinds of targets are set, it seems too soon to take urgent action, and then, after a few short years, it seems too late," WHO Director-General Lee Jong-wook said in a statement in Geneva. "Where the targets are the product of a large consensus there is also the hazard of everyone waiting for everyone else to risk making the first move. We still have time to avoid these pitfalls with the targets for 2015, but to do so we have to act now."

The World Bank estimates that progress against child mortality has been so slow that no sub-Saharan African country is on target to reach that MDG. At the current pace in the developing world as a whole, only 16 per cent of countries – representing 19 per cent of the developing world’s population – are on track for this goal. Similarly, only 17 per cent of developing countries are likely to meet the maternal mortality goal; here, Latin America and the Caribbean fare worst, with just 4.2 per cent of countries on track. In addition, only 40 per cent of developing countries are on track to reach the malnutrition target.

"Even with general economic growth and faster progress on the non-health MDGs, many regions will still miss many of the health MDG targets," said World Bank President James Wolfensohn. “We need to look at measures such as committing increased resources to meeting the health-related MDGs, and using those resources more effectively in countries.”