A little more than 13 years ago, world leaders assembled in New York to sign the Millennium Declaration to address some of the greatest moral dilemmas of our times — unequal global health, poverty, and inequities in development — and to establish a set of interrelated goals and targets to be met by 2015. Key goals included the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 4 targeting a reduction in mortality among children younger than 5 years of age by two thirds and MDG 5 targeting a reduction in maternal mortality by three quarters, both from 1990 base figures. With less than 3 years to go, despite overall global progress, these two MDGs are seriously off target for many countries.1
Recent assessment of global statistics suggests that despite major gains, among the 75 so-called Countdown countries that have 98% of all maternal deaths and deaths among children younger than 5 years of age, only 17 are on track to reach the MDG 4 target for child mortality and only 9 are on track to reach the MDG 5 target for maternal mortality.2 However, estimates from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation suggest that 31 countries will achieve MDG 4, 13 countries will achieve MDG 5, and only 9 countries will achieve both targets.3 As we celebrate the fact that the annual number of deaths among children younger than 5 years of age has fallen to 6.6 million (uncertainty range, 6.3 to 7.0 million), which is a 48% reduction from the 12.6 million deaths (uncertainty range, 12.4 to 12.9 million) in 1990, despite an increased number of births in many high-burden countries during the same time period,4 the sobering realization is that even in countries that will reach their MDG 4 and 5 targets, many will still have high numbers of deaths, with much scope for improvement.