Millennium Development Goals

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman]

My Lords, one of the benefits of the millennium development goals—alongside those of a sharpened public focus and broad narrative to which the right reverend Prelate alluded—has been the opportunity to learn sometimes what does not work and what does. The focus and funding that has come with these goals have allowed development agencies and countries to improve their performance in the areas of concern.

I use as an example the work done by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine’s maternal and child health unit and declare an interest because I chair its advisory council. With support from DfID and under the millennium development goal of improving maternal morality, they have found a programme that trains, in-country, workers and birth attendants dramatically to reduce maternal mortality. Of course when you reduce maternal mortality, you have a hugely beneficial effect, reducing maternal morbidity and child and infant mortality, all of which is ongoing. Recognising that a lot has been learnt and is still being learnt, when we look post-2015, is tremendously important. Some wheels have been invented but we do not want to start reinventing every wheel in the post-2015 framework.

In the three minutes left, I echo three themes—unsurprisingly, themes that were raised by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, because I, too, was at the event yesterday. I turn to women first—and perhaps, in the interest of brevity, I should stop there. We have huge amounts of evidence that, by improving the health, education and economic opportunities of women, their freedom from violence and forced and early marriage, their access to family planning, we underpin national development across the board. Women are absolutely crucial to that. Secondly, we must reach out to the bottom 25% in whatever part of the world they exist. Making this a universal and international aspiration and set of goals—not simply something that the developed world is doing unto the developing world—helps with this. I could say the same about women’s empowerment but perhaps this is a delicate issue in current circumstances.

Thirdly, there is the idea of having a single goal on health post-2015. Health is crucial to all those other areas of development, as the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, said. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, illustrated this in terms of mental health and the way in which not addressing mental health issues undermined achievement of the millennium development goals. As the House knows, my own interest is in neglected tropical diseases, which are not mentioned as such in the millennium development goals even within the health targets. Look at education, however. Children with worms do not go to school and, therefore, stop the achievement of the target. Look at economic development and the abolition of poverty. People who are blinded by oncho or trachoma are not going to be able to be economically active. Look at the reduction in HIV/AIDS. Women who have genital schistosomiasis are more likely to contract HIV and AIDS. Women with anaemia—because of neglected tropical diseases—are more likely to die in childbirth. Running through all those individual goals is the deleterious effect of neglected tropical diseases. You can go from that to health in terms of development. Having a single health goal—in terms of providing healthcare access, appropriate to that country, to everyone in that community—is one of the important overarching views going forward after the millennium development goals.