South-East Asia Regional Conference on Epidemiology

Monitoring progress towards the
achievement of health-related MDGs: are we
in line with principles of epidemiology?
Sunil Senanayake
The UN Millennium Summit in September 2000 made a historic commitment to improve the welfare
of the world’s poorest people within 15 years. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) cover
poverty, education, gender equity, child mortality, maternal mortality, HIV/AIDS, malaria and other
diseases, environmental issues and global partnerships. MDGs have eight goals, 21 targets and 60
indicators. Out of the eight goals, there are six health-related goals, and three of these are directly
related to health. There are nine health-related targets and 23 indicators. The indicators are to be
disaggregated by age, sex and urban-rural residence as far as possible.
Source: Country MDG reports
Fig. 1: Progress towards achieving MDGs in WHO/SEAR countries, 2008
The progress towards achieving the health-related Millennium Development Goals in the WHO
<strong>South</strong>-<strong>East</strong> <strong>Asia</strong> Region is presented in Fig. 1. The Region has done fairly well in the case of certain
MDGs, whereas in others a lot still needs to be done. For example, MDG 5, i.e. improving maternal