With less than 900 days to go until the target date to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, the world’s “to-do list” to fight extreme poverty, it’s time for all of us to step up our efforts – especially when it comes to the health MDGs (MDGs 4, 5, and 6).
We know progress is possible when the international community mobilizes: 14,000 fewer children die each day right now than in 1990, and from 2000 to 2010, 1.1 million malaria deaths were prevented. But we still have a long way to go to meet our goals for reducing child mortality (MDG 4), improving maternal health, including universal access to reproductive health (MDG 5), and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases (MDG 6).
What ideas and solutions can help the world save more lives and achieve MDGs 4, 5, and 6? We’ve asked a group of experts to kick off the conversation.
Skoll World Forum has partnered with the UN Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Thomson Reuters Foundation to launch an Up for Debate series that asks seven experts, “What is the one thing we must do differently or better to achieve MDGs 4, 5, and/or 6 by 2015?”
- Suprotik Basu, CEO of the Office of the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Financing the Health Millennium Development Goals and Malaria and MDG Advocate, Raymond G. Chambers;
- Mariam Claeson, Deputy Director, Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation;
- John D. Clemens, Executive Director, International Centre for Diarrhoel Research, Bangladesh;
- Sharon D’Agostino, Vice President, Corporate Citizenship, Johnson & Johnson;
- Steve Davis, President and Chief Executive Officer, PATH;
- Gopi Gopalakrishnan, President, World Health Partners; and
- Kandeh Yumkella, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sustainable Energy for All and Chief Executive of Sustainable Energy for All.