News on economics and development

The CMH Support Unit has prepared a new report, Tough choices: investing in health for development, which presents experiences since 2001 in countries that followed up on the recommendations of the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health. Drawing on the findings from country experiences, the report presents a policy agenda along which national analytical and planning efforts could be focused. The report, to be released in February/March 2006, aims to guide efforts of countries and their partners who are interested in a new approach to building evidence for policy, planning and advocacy for scaling up essential health interventions.

World Health Report 2005 - Make Every Mother and Child Count, says that this year almost 11 million children under five years of age will die from causes that are largely preventable. Among them are 4 million babies who will not survive the first month of life. At the same time, more than half a million women will die in pregnancy, childbirth or soon after. The report highlights that reducing this toll in line with the Millennium Development Goals depends largely on every mother and every child having the right to access to health care from pregnancy through childbirth, the neonatal period and childhood.

The Human Development Report 2005 by UNDP takes stock of human development, including progress towards the MDGs. It looks beyond the statistics and highlights the human costs of missed targets and broken promises. Extreme inequality between countries and within countries is identified as one of the main barriers to human development — and as a powerful brake on accelerated progress towards the MDGs.

To download the complete report click here: Human Development Report 2005

The WHO report, Health and the Millennium Development Goals, presents data on progress on the health goals and targets and looks beyond the numbers to analyze why improvements in health have been slow and to suggest what must be done to change this. The report points to weak and inequitable health systems as a key obstacle, including particularly a crisis in health personnel and the urgent need for sustainable health financing.

This World Bank publication examines how countries in the Eastern Europe and Central Asia are living up to the challenge of meeting 7 key indicators of development.

United Nations, New York, June 2005 — Asia's remarkable victories in its war on poverty have put the world, except for sub-Saharan Africa, on target to meet the Millennium Development Goals. The number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen by 130 million worldwide since 1990, even with overall growth of more than 800 million in the developing regions since then, according to The Millennium Development Goals Report 2005. By 2015, the poorest countries in Africa are likely to have a rising proportion of those living in extreme poverty, lacking a primary school education and dying before the age of five, the MDGs report says. It goes on to detail the trends affecting the achievement of the other Goals in primary, education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS, ensuring environmental sustainability, and promoting global partnerships for development.

This task force paper is a part of the UN Millennium Project. The paper responds to the challenges posed by high rates of maternal mortality, continued child deaths due to preventable illnesses, enormous unmet need for sexual and reproductive health services, and weak and fragile health systems. In addition to identifying the technical interventions to address these problems, the report asserts that policymakers must act now to change the fundamental societal dynamics that currently prevent those most in need from accessing quality health care. In addition the paper proposes bold and concrete steps that governments and international agencies can take to ensure that health sector interventions have significant effects on all aspects of development and poverty eduction.

This task force paper is a part of the UN Millennium Project and underscores that the goal to reduce hunger by half by 2015 is achievable with proven, effective, targeted interventions. It calls for concrete steps to reduce hunger through actions in several key areas, including investments to improve the agricultural production of food-insecure farmers, improvement in the nutritional status of the chronically hungry and vulnerable, investments in productive safety nets, promotion of rural markets and off-farm employment to increase the incomes of the hungry, and restoration and conversation of natural resources essential for food security.

This task force paper is a part of the UN Millennium Project. It argues that education has the potentiel to transform societies and to fully realize human capabilities, to prepare workers to participate in the global economy, and to provide citizens with the tools for full engagement in public life. The report lays out a vision of what will be required to achieve universal primary education in the developing world - specific actions to increase access and demand for education in combination with difficult but feasible improvements in the institutions of the education sector.