The UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Abstract

Almost like the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it was envisaged that the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) would lead to commitment by governments and actors to increase their efforts towards improving public health. When one reviews the MDGs, it is notable that some of the goals were directly related to health while the others were lateral but had a great influence on health. As such, it is important that the MDGs should not be viewed in isolation because they were interlinked in some way, and therefore successful implementation would have required concerted effort from a multi-sectoral perspective. It is worth highlighting that due to a number of factors, there were variations across countries/regions in their success in meeting the targets of the MDGs. While it was good that the MDGs created impetus for commitment towards improving public health, blanket targets for the MDGs as well as vertical programmes aimed at achieving the MDGs were not helpful because they ignored the unique underlying challenges of each setting and issues of sustainability and ownership. The MDGs were not an end in themselves, as the work continues in the new developmental era of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).