Health: Here's a bold and smart SDG target
Would it be possible to save 7 million people from dying in the world’s poorest countries? It’s a bold target, but one that is realistic and achievable.
Based on medical research published originally in The Lancet in September 2014 – and now extended to include costs and benefits – Professor Prabhat Jha and colleagues from the University of Toronto, suggest that reaching this target would be possible if we massively increased health expenditure – $444 billion a year in 2030 - and used this money to improve health infrastructure, expand health systems and target smart interventions.
As reported on TIME.com this could reduce premature deaths by 40% by 2030 – in other words save 7 million lives – in low income and lower middle-income countries. For every dollar spent we’ll do $4 worth of good.
And looking just at only low-income countries, which currently spend just $14 per person on health, the bang-for-buck is even greater. In these countries there is still, unfortunately, a high prevalence of easily preventable diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis. By 2030, spending $34 dollars more per person would save 2 million lives annually. For the world's poorest billion, each dollar spent on general health care would do $13 of good.
You can read all the papers on health here and download the one page PDF here.
The smartest targets for the post-2015 development agenda
What are the smartest targets for the post-2015 development agenda?
In a world of limited resources, we can’t do everything, but how should we prioritize? The Copenhagen Consensus Center provides information on which targets will do the most social good relative to their costs. The final decision on choosing goals will definitely rest on a number of factors, not just economics – but knowing the costs and benefits provides an important piece of information.
The Post-2015 Consensus brought together, renowned experts from the UN, NGO and private sectors with 60 teams of economists to produced 100+ research papers to establish the most effective targets for the post-2015 development agenda within 22 core issue areas: Air Pollution, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Conflict & Violence, Data for Development, Education, Energy, Food Security, Gender Equality, Governance & Institutions, Health: Chronic Diseases, Health: Health Systems, Health: Infant Mortality & Maternal Health, Health: Infectious Diseases, Infrastructure, Illicit Financial Flows, Nutrition, Population & Demography, Poverty, Science & Technology, Trade, and Water & Sanitation.
An Expert Panel including two Nobel Laureates has reviewed all of this research and identified 19 targets that represent the best value-for-money in development over the period 2016 to 2030.
Only have three minutes? Watch our introduction video to the Post-2015 Consensus project.
Making prioritization a factor in the post-2015 debate
An overview of Copenhagen Consensus' ground-breaking research which is shaping the thinking for the 193 governments about to prioritize the smartest development goals for 2016-2030. If you've just read the article in The Economist you might be interested in exploring more about our project, and the research we've undertaken so we have put together an online supplement with more in-depth information.
