In September 2000, at the United Nations Millennium Summit, world leaders agreed to a set of time-bound and measurable goals and targets for combating poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women. A road map was prepared in the form of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which consisted of eight goals, eighteen targets, and forty-eight indicators.

India’s track record in health related goals is as follows:

Reduce Child Mortality

Globally 11 million young children die every year. India’s performance even in reducing infant mortality rate (IMR) is off-target in 80% of the areas. Performance in immunisation is better but still 40% of areas are off-target.

Improve Maternal Mortality

In the developing countries, the risk of dying in child-birth is one in 48.Though there are safe motherhood programmes, the progress in India is very slow.

Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Other Diseases

Countries like Brazil, Senegal, Thailand and Uganda have shown that we can stop HIV in its tracks. But, India, which has been supplying relatively inexpensive generic drugs to some of the countries, has no public programme to treat HIV patients freely. Malaria was reportedly eradicated in India, but there are fresh reports of its surfacing again.