THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS AND THE UNIVERSAL HEALTH COVERAGE AGENDA The pursuit of equity is at the heart of the SDGs, and Target 3.8 specifically addresses the achievement of universal health coverage (UHC), a central pillar of SDG 3 overall ( UN, 2017):Īchieve universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all. Of particular relevance to this report, SDG 3 focuses on “ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages” ( UN, 2017). The SDGs represent an attempt to address the unfinished agenda of the MDG era, setting forth a comprehensive set of integrated targets through economic, social, and environmental lenses. The MDGs largely overlooked inequalities within nations, and placed insufficient emphasis on improving conditions for the poorest populations in both low- and middle-income nations.Īs a successor to the MDGs, in September 2015 the global community adopted a new development agenda-the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)-agreed on by 193 countries ( UNDP, 2015). Yet, despite the overall success of the MDGs, progress has been uneven. Spurred by the MDGs, the proportion of undernourished people in developing regions fell from 23 percent to 13 percent the burdens of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), tuberculosis (TB), and malaria fell dramatically, meeting global targets and child and maternal mortality decreased by 53 percent and 43 percent, respectively ( WHO, 2015). The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in particular have intensified the focus on health, development, and poverty reduction and encouraged the scale-up of investments in interventions worldwide.

Since 2000, programs to improve health across the world have accelerated rapidly.

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