Socio-economic development and adaptation to climate change are closely intertwined. Adaptation is increasingly described as climate resilient development or development under a hostile climate. In support of this view, this paper calculates the combined cost of meeting and at the same time “climate-proofing” the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for Africa. Treating adaptation and developmen...

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) galvanized attention, resources and accountability on a small number of health concerns of low- and middle-income countries with unprecedented results. The international community is presently developing a set of Sustainable Development Goals as the successor framework to the MDGs. This review examines the evidence base for the current health-related prop...

In its Millennium Declaration of September 2000, the United Nations (UN) adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), to be reached in 2015 through concerted efforts worldwide. According to UN calculations, the estimated costs in terms of additional development aid of meeting the MDGs in all countries vary from US$121 billion in 2006 to $189 billion in 2015. It appears that while Asia is we...

The world's governments failed to achieve the Health for All 2000 goals from the Alma Ata Declaration of 1978. Although a lot of milestones have been covered since 2000, the world's governing authorities are unlikely to achieve the current Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which expire by the end of this year. The inability to achieve these goals may be linked to the multiplicity of health-re...

T he Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have captured the attention of the international health and development community in recent years [1–6], and in 2003 two world reports—the Human Development Report and the World Health Report—concentrated specifi cally on these goals [7,8]. The MDGs provide a vision for development in which health and education are squarely at the centre [1,9]. Three of ...

The world has made a great deal of progress through the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to improve the health and well-being of people around the globe, but there remains a long way to go. Here we provide reflections on Rwanda's experience in working to meet the health-related targets of the MDGs. This experience has informed our proposal of five guiding principles that may be useful for co...

Poverty is no longer uniquely a humanitarian challenge for the developed nations of the West; it is now a first-order security problem. The evidence is now overwhelming that poverty contributes to violent conflict, helps the spread of infectious diseases, threatens global income growth and causes environmental damage. Governments are beginning to react to this threat, but have yet to mount a co...

Decisive evidence is emerging that population and reproductive health matter considerably to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This statement is a major departure from academic thinking over the past two decades, and a brief review of the successive viewpoints of economists and demographers regarding the relationship between population and economic well-being offers a ...

OBJECTIVE This analysis seeks to set the stage for equity-sensitive monitoring of the health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). METHODS We use data from international household-level surveys (Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS)) to demonstrate that establishing an equity baseline is necessary and feasible, even in low-income and data-po...

Mental health is a crucial public health and development issue in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), a region where little progress has been made towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In this paper we argue that not only will limited progress in achieving these targets have a significant impact on mental health, but it will be impossible to achieve some of these aspirations in the a...