UN Millennium Development Goals

The underlying cause of death in an estimated 45 percent of all deaths that occur among children under the age of 5 is undernutrition. This condition encompasses foetal growth restriction, stunting, wasting, and deficiencies of vitamin A and zinc. In addition, suboptimal breastfeeding contributes to this condition. Between the years 1990 and 2013, the percentage of children under the age of five who were underweight dropped from 28 percent to 17 percent in developing countries. The current rate of progress is very close to the rate that is required in order to fulfill the MDG objective; nonetheless, improvements have been unevenly distributed both between and within the various regions.

Important Information Regarding the following:

The number of deaths that occurred among children under the age of five over the world decreased from 12.7 million in the year 1990 to 6.3 million in the year 2013.

The percentage of children under the age of 5 who were underweight fell from 28 percent in developing nations in 1990 to 17 percent in 2013 (a decline of 13 percentage points).

Between the years 2001 and 2013, the number of newly diagnosed cases of HIV fell by 38% worldwide.

The number of people who die from HIV-negative tuberculosis infections is falling, along with the number of people who have the disease.

Access to improved drinking-water sources was used as a proxy indicator to determine whether or not the world had met the target for access to safe drinking water set by the United Nations Millennium Development Goals in 2010. However, more work remains to be done in order to meet the target for sanitation.

WHO Response

WHO collaborates with a variety of partners to provide assistance to national initiatives aimed at achieving the health-related MDGs. Among the activities carried out by WHO are:

establishing guidelines for prevention and treatment as well as other global norms and standards; providing countries with technical support to execute guidelines; analysing social and economic variables and highlighting the wider hazards and opportunities for health WHO provides assistance to national authorities as they formulate health policies and strategies. Additionally, WHO assists governments in working with development partners to connect domestic goals with external assistance. In addition to this, the World Health Organization (WHO) gathers and shares statistics on health in order to assist countries in budgeting for health care and monitoring their progress.

Millennium Development Goals

The Millennium Development Goals (also abbreviated as MDGs) were a set of eight international development objectives that were intended to be achieved by the year 2015; they were formulated as a result of the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000 and the subsequent adoption of the United Nations Millennium Declaration. These were derived from the OECD DAC International Development Goals, which were ratified by the Development Ministers as part of the “Shaping the 21st Century Strategy.” In 2016, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were replaced with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Conclusion

Women need to have access to reproductive health care that is of high quality as well as interventions that are successful in order to lower the frequency of maternal deaths. In 2012, 64 percent of married or in a consensual union women aged 15–49 were using some type of contraception, while 12 percent of these same women desired to stop or postpone childbearing but were not using contraception.