Introduction
The United Nations (UN) Global Sustainable Development Goals summarise the primary objectives of improving the living standards within planet Earth by the year 2030. The goal of good health is taken very seriously by the UN and several strides through policy formulation have been made to that effect. The goal aims at improving the general population through reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, and fighting epidemic diseases such as Malaria, HIV/AIDS, and other communicable ailments. Despite the commendable progress in addressing this goal, the child mortality rate is still relatively high.
Moreover, many women still succumb to pregnancy and childbirth-related hurdles. As proposed in the 2030 Global Sustainable Development Goals, global quality health can be achieved through proper health education, treatment, immunization campaigns, preventive care, and reproductive or sexual healthcare. Thus, this research study examines the challenges of maternal and child mortality currently faced in achieving global good health and potential solutions to realize the vision of the 2030 United Nations Global Sustainable Development Goals.
According to the recent data from the UN on the performance of the good health parameter, progress has been made in the maternal, child, and general healthcare provision across the globe (Bendavid & Bhattacharya 2014). Specifically, the progress has been realized as a result of a comprehensive public-private sector partnership in line with the Millennium Development Goal for the health pillar (Bendavid & Bhattacharya 2014).
The report further indicates that more than 6.2 million people were saved from the scourge of malaria (Bendavid & Bhattacharya 2014). The study will concentrate on the current impediments to quality health and potential remedy in line with the UN healthcare policy.
Good Health: Challenges and Remedies
There are challenges related to poor health education and healthcare practices that are negating the gains realized in the last decade supporting universal good health. There has been a decline in the percentage of preventable child deaths by more than 50% from the year 1990 (Bendavid 2014). Moreover, the deaths due to pregnancy and birth-related complications have significantly declined by 45% within the same timeline across the globe.
Interestingly, the number of reported cases of new HIV/AIDS infections drastically dropped by 30% between the years 2000 and 2013. Unfortunately, the UN and its development partners have not been able to mobilize adequate resources to tackle the healthcare needs across the globe. Therefore, there is a need to incorporate more partners and volunteers to realize the goal of good health by the year 2030. At present, more than six million children still die annually within the first year of being born from these ailments (Bendavid & Bhattacharya 2014). This translates to about 16,000 daily infant deaths from diseases that can be prevented such as tuberculosis and measles (Thomas et al. 2017).
Each day, more than a thousand women still die from pregnancy and childbirth-related complications. Factually, “less than 56% of the births are attended by skilled professionals” (Jablonski 2014, p. 309). In Africa, the HIV/AIDS epidemic still claims more than a hundred thousand teenagers and young adults in the sub-Saharan Africa continent (Gething et al. 2016). The progress in policy formulation and capacity building to improve on the healthcare providers across the globe has experienced a paradigm shift from primitive to a participatory approach involving the direct engagement of the UN partners (Gething et al. 2016).
As a result, the UN has been able to track the performance of each health indicator and make adjustments through a continuous and self-sustaining system (Thomas et al. 2017). For instance, in the year 2013, the UN, through its UNDP branch, was able to create a standardized ‘Healthcare for All 2020’ policy to directly empower the healthcare providers (Jablonski 2014). The support has included many subsidies and offering of free medication for diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV/AIDS (Bendavid & Bhattacharya 2014).
The process of achieving universal health coverage in line with the good health goal requires constant review of the current policies and initiatives in place by different healthcare provision partners. For instance, it is prudent to create a self-regulating system for the provision of affordable and safe medicine or vaccine for everyone in the world (Bendavid & Bhattacharya 2014). Currently, limited funding in the field of research is compromising effectiveness in the development of new medicines or vaccines to fight common ailments (Bendavid 2014). Specifically, in the last five years, there has been a surge in the number of reported cases of malaria deaths in Uganda and other parts of east and central Africa (Bendavid & Bhattacharya 2014).
Actually, due to reduced funding of the research initiatives on malaria, the CDC and UN released a vaccine that has a success rate of less than 70% (Gething et al. 2016). In the ideal scenario, such cases can be minimized through comprehensive support of research activities to develop effective, affordable, and freely available vaccines for the population on this planet. In addition, there is an urgent need to strengthen the current partnership contract with manufacturers of different medicines through subsidies to make these drugs affordable across the globe (Bendavid 2014). For instance, the UN could strengthen the partnership with the ARV manufacturers to make the drugs more available in Africa and Asia.
Conclusion
The research on the challenges and remedies to address the good health goal as one of the seventeen pillars of the United Nations (UN) Global Sustainable Development has revealed interesting results. Impressive progress has been recorded over the last 20 years in the growth and development of sustainable healthcare across the globe. Specifically, the intervention activities of the UN have realized remarkable results in the reduction of maternal, infant, teenage, and adult deaths from preventable ailments and communicable diseases.
However, the initiative has suffered several setbacks due to a poor framework for public-private partnerships in Africa, and inadequate intervention strategies, especially in terms of public-private partnerships in healthcare provision. These challenges can be addressed through improvement in healthcare education, capacity building, and increased funding of healthcare-related research initiatives.
For instance, in my opinion, to avoid preventable infant and teenage deaths in Africa, it is necessary to increase the immunization campaigns and promote reproductive or sex education. These strategies will reaffirm the UN’s bold commitment to end the scourge of tuberculosis, malaria, AIDS, and other common ailments by the year 2030. The UN’s 2030 good health goal is likely to be achieved if these recommendations are integrated into the current policy framework. At present, the progress of the good health parameter is relatively positive and likely to be realized by 2030 if all factors are held constant.
Reference List
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Bendavid, E & Bhattacharya, J 2014, ‘The relationship of health aid to population health improvements’, JAMA Intern Med, vol. 4, no. 174, pp. 881–887.
Gething, W, Casey, C, Weiss, J, Bisanzio, D, Bhatt, S & Cameron, E 2016, ‘Mapping plasmodium falciparum mortality in Africa between 1990 and 2015’, New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 375, no. 25, pp. 2435–2445.
Jablonski, R 2014, ‘How aid targets votes: the impact of electoral incentives on foreign aid distribution’, World Politics, vol. 66, no. 4, pp. 293–330.
Thomas, J, Tara, T, Cohen, M & Dieleman, J 2017, ‘Lower-income countries that face the most rapid shift in non-communicable disease burden are also the least prepared’, Health Affairs, vol. 36, no. 11, pp. 1866-1878.