Millennium Development Goals and Health: Another Selective Development?

The MDGs has been carved out of the UN Millennium Declaration adopted in the fifty-fifth session of the UN General Assembly in September, 2000. Significantly, the MDGs has a bias towards health, education and empowerment. This could be construed as a positive move in international policy as far as the development agenda is concerned. But a closer look at the strategies show that there are several roadblocks towards achieving these goals. The major constraint is the lack of reliable data in developing countries for planning public health programmes. This results in an element of uncertainty and leads to unrealistically high targets which could distort the already fragile health systems in several countries. The selective approach could also spiral intensive drives which might further erode the primary health care system as has happened with the attempt to eradicate polio. The alternative, therefore, is to evolve longer-term, broader, system-based interventions to address the health concerns in the MDGs.