Washington, D.C. — January 7, 2016 — In a new piece published on the Huffington Post, R4D Managing Director Robert Hecht and Program Director Shan Soe-Lin argue that in the era of the Sustainable Developement Goals, it is especially critical that a focus be maintained on lowering maternal and child deaths.
From the article:
“On December 31st, the curtain closed on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which have defined the development and global health agenda for the past 15 years. The new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) formally adopted during the United Nations General Assembly in September have gone into effect. These 17 broad and ambitious goals and 169 related targets will form the strategic blueprint for global development for the next decade and a half to 2030, replacing the more streamlined MDG set of 8 goals and 21 targets set in 2000, which focused on a few key objectives, including improvements in maternal and child health and control of infectious disease epidemics.
“Even though these health MDGs are set to expire at the end of December, the work is far from over. We would argue that it is vital for low- and middle-income countries and their donor partners to maintain, and even intensify, the current emphasis on lowering mother and child deaths and ending AIDS, TB, and malaria, especially in the more complex world of the SDGs where it would be easy to lose focus.”
