Health-related MDGs should 'remain at the heart' of post-2015 goals

Mark Suzman, managing director for International Policy, Programs & Advocacy at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, writes in the foundation's "Impatient Optimists" blog about the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and how "there is a heightened sense of urgency to ensure we do everything possible to meet this ambitious deadline [of 2015] -- and to make sure that a new set of goals are set that keep up the critical momentum." He continues, "Based on the foundation's experience in global health and development, and my own experience on the U.N. team that helped negotiate the original goals, we think the MDGs should focus on retaining and building on what has worked." Suzman says "[t]he next set of goals should ideally be ... focused on the poorest"; "measurable and time-bound"; ambitious but achievable"; "limited in number"; "simple and clear"; and "able to secure global cooperation." He adds, "In health specifically, we believe MDGs 4, 5, and 6, whose focus is on maternal and child mortality, reproductive health and the three infectious diseases that have the most impact on the lives of the poorest -- HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, need to be updated with new targets and deadlines, but remain at the heart of the post-2015 agenda" (3/7).