The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight international development goals that all 191 UN member states have agreed to try to achieve by 2015. The United Nations Millennium Declaration, signed in September 2000, consign world leaders to combat poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women. The goals in MDGs are derivative from this declaration. Several of these goals are directly related to health.
Following is the list of MDGs:-
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Develop a global partnership for development
The MDGs are inter-dependent; all the MDG influence health, and health influences all the MDGs. For example, better health facilitate children to learn and adults to earn. Gender equality is necessary to the reaching of better health. Reducing poverty, hunger and environmental degradation positively influences, but also depends on, better health.