NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

There’s plenty of moral and rhetorical support for fighting diseases of poverty, but if you look at global health spending trends lately the story is one of stagnation, or even decline.

As the Millennium Development Goals (aka the MDGs, a set of 8 anti-poverty goals established in 2000, the start of the new millennium) are nearing the15-year finish line, developing countries have made great progress in some areas, including significant reductions in child mortality and deaths from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

Yet an unacceptably high number of children and mothers continue to die in sub-Saharan African countries, and HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria remain major killers. Even as the global community shifts focus to the next 15 years of pursuing the new agenda, as described by the Sustainable Development Goals, the need for donor assistance to achieve the unfinished MDG agenda persists.