Bhutta – SDGs

So as you know the sustainable development goals, which have now replaced the millennium goals, the MDGs, are very different in that health is just one part of it. But a lot of the goals, those that relate to environment, poverty, living conditions, nutrition, gender sensitivity, adolescent health, climate change, I mean they’re inter-linked and they’re linked to each other because they’re fundamental determinants of health and outcomes.  

So one thing that has happened with the background discussion and planning for the sustainable development goals is that we have very effectively said we’ve made good progress as a global community in reducing mortality. It’s now time to also bring into discussion the whole issue of quality of outcomes, morbidity, and recognizing that to save a life but not give that life proper opportunities for growth, development, and optimal outcomes is actually not a global purpose.  

So as a global community, we are now really very focused on “allowing all children, families everywhere the opportunity to develop to their best potential”. And this means that fundamentally we are not looking at Band-Aid solutions of you know providing interventions to save a life here alone, that’s important in its own right, but not sufficient. But we are looking at the entire continuum of child health, school health, adolescent health, maternal health, early newborn, infancy, children as a continuum in terms of seeing what are the risks, the barriers, the pitfalls that need to be addressed and how they can be done both within health and outside of health.