Building on the Millennium Development Goals – the path to a new health goal for humanity
In 2000, world leaders endorsed the Millennium Declaration and agreed to eight Millennium Development Goals, including three global health targets. As these goals were set to expire in 2015, this necessitated international agreement on a post-2015 agenda. The EU-funded GO4HEALTH (Formulating new goals for global health, and proposing new governance for global health that will allow the achievement of these goals) project contributed to the global discussion about the new health goals and governance mechanisms. The new goals would be based on the best scientific evidence and address the shortcomings of the previous set. The GO4HEALTH team also liaised extensively with key players to understand the effects of different priorities on the process. After the initial research, the GO4HEALTH team proposed that the primary post-2015 goal should be the right to health. The project's other advocated targets included universal health coverage, plus a healthy social and natural environment. Such targets guided the subsequent analysis. Researchers examined two key issues. The first was how health will be integrated into the broader sustainability discussion. The second was how the realisation of social human rights is a precondition for the achievement of social sustainability. The final analysis focused on eight key themes: governance, financing, health and environment, access to medicines, community participation, universal health coverage, and accountability. Such foci helped clarify the framework for advancing health equity. The team demonstrated the necessity for an extensive reworking of health governance and financing, to overcome gridlock and competition among health players. Researchers also concluded that a rights-based approach provides useful guidance for implementation of the new goal of "leaving no one behind". GO4HEALTH's new goals for the post-2015 period have helped to clarify global health priorities, and the ways toward implementation. The outcome could lead to fairer and more sustainable global healthcare practices in future.
Keywords
Millennium Development Goals, GO4HEALTH, global health, governance, rights, sustainability
