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Minister wants health 'directly' in SDGs

Wed, May 16th, 2012 10:28 pm BdST

Dhaka, May 16 (bdnews24.com) – The health minister has said he will advocate keeping health directly in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which will replace Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) after 2015, as he believes health is 'linked' with development.

"I'll be very much in favour (of health) and will try to put forward health as it is linked with sustainable development," AFM Ruhal Haque said in the capital on Wednesday.

The minister made the comment amid concerns as the country's positioning paper circulated by the UN before the conference on Sustainable Development, also known as Rio+20, in June in Rio de Janeiro of Brazil does not keep health directly in any of its targets.

The Ministry of Environment is working on the paper as climate change dominates the paper where health has been kept as 'climate and health' or 'food and health'.

"It (climate change) might be a serious problem, but health cannot be ignored," the minister said, adding: "Health comes first when a disaster occurs."

"If we want sustainable development, we must reduce maternal and child mortality. Otherwise no development will take place," he said.

With just three years to go for the MDGs deadline, experts and policymakers recently at an international conference in Dhaka called upon countries to look beyond it to save mothers and children.

MDG-5 suggests reducing maternal deaths by three-quarters by 2015 and achieving universal access to reproductive health. Reducing two-thirds of under-5 mortality is the goal of MDG-4.

Bangladesh is well on track to achieve MDG-4 and 5 by cutting under-5 mortality to 53 per 1,000 live births and maternal deaths to 194 per 100,000 every year. But experts say more efforts are needed to cut it further.

Former secretary M M Reza said it is not possible for the Ministry of Environment alone to prepare a country positioning paper on sustainable development. "The Ministry of Planning should be assigned the task to take everyone on board."

The MDGs, a product of at least 10 years of discussions, have been the focus of global and national efforts on poverty reduction since 2000. Of its eight goals, three are directly linked to health.

 

SOURCE - BDNEWS24