18 September 2010

Five More Years ~ Millennium Development Goals

Thanks to Harvard colleague Calestous Juma for spotting Millennium Goals, Five Years to Go in the NYTimes by Jeffrey Sachs, the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and author of Common Wealth about the Millennium Development Goals in Africa...
"When my colleagues and I suggested that AIDS, malaria and other epidemic diseases could be controlled and that Africa’s economic growth could be spurred if the world helped the continent to achieve the Millennium Goals, we were often greeted with derision. Africa, I was told, was simply too violent, too corrupt, too divided to improve. [...] The Millennium Development Goals themselves deserve a lot of credit by providing a powerful organizing framework and a bold but realistic time horizon. Dozens of African governments have now adopted national planning strategies based on the Millennium Goals. Nations around the world now have specific, time-bound, outcome-oriented plans that are showing real progress because they are tapping into the synergies of poverty reduction, increased agricultural output, disease control, increased school enrollments and improved infrastructure as targeted by the Millennium Development Goals. The donor countries helped to promote major advances in public health when they created the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations. [...] On their 10th birthday, the Millennium Development Goals offer the world a realistic path to ending extreme poverty."

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