Millennium Development Goals

Before I get into much more detail about where I am working, specifically, I wanted to share about the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), as these are what the Center for National Health Development in Ethiopia (CNHDE) are supporting.  For much more detail on these, if you are interested, please see the UN’s MDG website: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

The goals were initially endorsed at a UN summit in September 2000, and are targeted at freeing humanity from extreme poverty, hunger, illiteracy and disease.  They are the world's time-bound and quantified targets for addressing extreme poverty in multiple areas including:

As an example, a specific target for the "Child Health" goal is to reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the mortality rate of children under five years old.  As far as progress thus far, the number of deaths of children under the age of five declined from 12.4 million in 1990 to 8.1 million in 2009, meaning that nearly 12,000 fewer children are dying each day. Areas where specific attention is being paid to have a continued impact in this area include special efforts to fight pneumonia, diarrhea, and malaria while improving nutrition for children. (The Millennium Development Goals Report 2011)

Another example is the sixth goal which is a broader health goal to “Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases”, with multiple targets, including halting by 2015 and beginning to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.  Globally, deaths from malaria have decreased by an estimated 20% - from nearly 985,000 in 2000 to 781,000 in 2009. Meanwhile, the number of malaria cases rose from about 233 million in 2000, to 244 million in 2005, and then decreased to 225 million in 2009. Major decreases in the number of malaria cases are associated with intensive control efforts, however, 90% of all deaths from malaria still occur in sub-Saharan Africa and most of these deaths are among children under age five. (The Millennium Development Goals Report 2011)

I hope that this gives a bit of a broad perspective on some of the health challenges and issues that I will be addressing while working with the CNHDE…and more to come on some specifics of CNHDE and how these goals are being supported in Ethiopia, specifically.