Healthcare and realising sustainable development goals

It is no gainsaying that health is important for sustainable development and this explains why it never misses out in global development agenda. The International Council for Science explains that health “creates resilience to shocks and is a critical element in the cycle of sustainable development: improving health leads to economic development which usually leads […]

It is no gainsaying that health is important for sustainable development and this explains why it never misses out in global development agenda.
The International Council for Science explains that health “creates resilience to shocks and is a critical element in the cycle of sustainable development: improving health leads to economic development which usually leads to improvements in health.”
Bearing the significance of health in mind, Nigerians voted for the prioritisation of healthcare in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which world leaders will adopt during the 70th session of the United Nations General Assembly as a replacement for Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
The MDGs  will formally come to an end this year after 15 years of implementation.
A United Nations survey called MyWorld revealed that 10.7 percent of Nigerians polled on their priorities for the SDGs indicated healthcare.
In line with the priorities of Nigerians, the sustainable goals which will come into effect next year, has factored in health among the 17 Goals proposed for adoption.
Goal number three of the SDGs states: “Ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages.”
Providing a scientific analysis of the goal, the International Council for Sciences stated, “This goal is wide-ranging and includes non-communicable diseases, mental health, disease prevention, tobacco control, disaster risk reduction and intellectual property.”
The council observed that missing elements in the goal included acknowledgement of the role of the global food system, the built environment, and socioeconomic factors such as education and working conditions/occupational health which are all determinants of the global disease burden.
However, Nigerians are worried that the MDGs has not been achieved and the SDGs will pose even harder huddles for the relevant authorities. The Director/Secretary of programme, the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on MDGs, recently described the implementation of the millennium agenda in Nigeria as an “unfinished business.”
The Executive Director of Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, Auwal Ibrahim Musa, also told a conference of the West African Civil Society Organisation that implementing the MDGs in Nigeria has been “in the deficit.”
The major concern is that since Nigeria could not achieve the eight goals of the MDGs within the time frame provided, it would be difficult for the country to achieve the 17 SDGs that have been proposed for adoption in the next 15 years.
Experts are worried on how 13 health-related targets of the sustainable goals can be implemented and success achieved.
The President of the African Law Foundation (AFRILAW), Barrister Okereke Chinwike, in an interview said Nigeria must prioritise the goals and targets according to domestic needs in order to channel resources where interventions are most needed.
He said it would be impossible to implement all the goals and targets given the challenges encountered in the implementation of the MDGs.
As at last year, an analysis of data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) indicated that Nigeria had fully achieved goal three, which is one among the eight goals of the MDGs, hinged on “promoting gender equality and empowering women.”
The 2014 MDGs performance tracking survey report released by the NBS revealed that though progress had been made in meeting health related targets, some of the targets may not be achieved before the deadline.
The MDGs performance tracking survey showed that considerable gains had been achieved in goal four hinged on reduction in child mortality with infant mortality rate put at 58 (per 1000 live births) in 2014 as against 61 (per 1000 live births) recorded in 2012.
The Executive Director of the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) Abdul Tejan-Cole, recently said, “the MDGs is an unfinished business because we still have issues like HIV.”
While some of the health-related MDGs have been rolled over to the SDGs, experts are worried that the challenges that limited the achievement of the MDGs may also be rolled over.
Experts have identified some of the challenges such as late adoption of the development agenda, poor funding, unreliable disaggregated data that make performance tracking difficult, and poor political goodwill in implementation.
Recently, the Head of the Conditional Grants Scheme of the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on MDGs, Zubairu Abdullahi, admitted that inadequate resources had been the major challenge of implementing the goals in the country. He decried that six months into 2015, funds for capital projects have not been released for the implementation of the MDGs projects.