Written by: Olivia Zhang
Edited by: Krysta Reveche
What is UN SDG 3: Good Health and Well-Being?
In the third of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs], the intersection between a sustainable future and public health is observed. According to the UN’s official website, Goal 3 addresses and seeks to, by the year 2030, correct inefficacies in the health care system, expand emotional and physical health care access (especially to regions with underdeveloped infrastructure), and reduce the negative impacts of pollution and climate change on global health. These specific subsets of Goal 3 bring up the following inquiries: what decision-making was involved in creating the specific priorities for global health, and how has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted progress toward reaching this goal by 2030?
Mental health
In September of 2015, a historic step was made as mental health was included in the SDGs, and the UN recognized the burden of mental illness on populations. This is the first time in which mental health was explicitly mentioned as a priority for global development. In past initiatives, such as the Millenium Development Goals [MDGs], mental well-being was not mentioned or prioritized to the same extent as physical health.
In mid-2014, the UN Open Working Group released a draft of the new development goals from 2015 to 2030. Civil, non-profit, and non-governmental organizations had not been involved in the decision-making process when the first draft was released. While there was improvement seen in the range of issues discussed in the SDGs draft since the MDGs, mental health was only mentioned in a minor context, with the complexities of mental health problems and extent of the issue being glossed over. From the inefficacies shown in this draft, FundaMentalSDG, a global initiative to “strengthen mental health [prioritization] in the SDGs,” according to research journal Global Mental Health (Cambridge), was born. The FundaMentalSDG Steering Group argued that the UN should include two mental health targets and a clear indicator of such in the drafts. This movement gained global recognition in the following months. To a large extent, these efforts were effective in expanding the recognition that national governments had of mental health issues.
The preamble of the official SDGs released in 2015 regarded mental health as a topic of equal importance to physical health, and advocated for member states to implement equitable and universal health care and assurance of mental well-being. The UN also recognized mental health as a threat to global development that must be addressed.
To follow up on that statement, mental health is directly referenced in a subset of Goal 3:
3.4 “By 2030, Reduce by one third premature mortality from non-communicable diseases through prevention and treatment and promote mental health and well-being.”
The first portion of Goal 3.4 refers to non-communicable diseases, an umbrella term that includes problems related to physical well-being such as autoimmune diseases, strokes, Parkinson’s disease, most heart diseases, as well as those related to mental well-being like behavioral, developmental, and neurological disorders. Mental health is also implicitly referenced in subgoals 3.5 (referring to treatment and prevention of substance abuse) and 3.8 (referring to universal health care).
Child and Maternal Health
The UN specifies subsets of the goal that relate to child and maternal health:
3.1 Reduce the “global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100,000 live births” by 2030.
3.2 End preventable deaths of children under the age of 5, and have all countries take actionable steps to reduce neonatal mortality (newborn death rate) to less than 12 per thousand live births, and mortality of children under 5 to less than 25 per thousand by 2030.
However, even before the onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, the world had been experiencing difficulties in staying on track to reach Goal 3 by 2030. In August 2020, the UN released UN/DESA Policy Brief #81, which included information regarding how COVID-19 impacted the feasibility of reaching the SDGs, as well as what conditions existed prior to the pandemic. From 2000 to 2017, for example, the global death rate of women who were either pregnant, or within 42 days of the end of pregnancy, had declined by 38%. However, despite a reduction in deaths, this rate was less than half of what is needed to achieve the target goal of “reducing maternal deaths to fewer than 70 per 100,000 live births by 2030,” as stated by the UN. Additionally, the global mortality rate of youth under 5 years old, despite having fallen by 2018 to nearly half of the rate it was in 2010, is disproportionately high in less-developed countries, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa.
The impact of the COVID-19 Crisis
Disrupted health care, reduced access to resources, and lack of nutritional and childcare services from the pandemic negatively affected the poor and vulnerable. There was an increase in the number of women facing economic instability, and family planning supplies and services became less accessible. The pandemic stalled, and in some areas, even reversed, the progress made toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goal of maintaining good health. As deaths from the infectious disease increased, hospitals worldwide became overpopulated, which harmed the ability for people to receive essential healthcare. The COVID-19 pandemic brought to light important problems within the healthcare industry, as well as the heightened experiences of the already poor and vulnerable. The recognition of such problems is an essential step to take in order to improve global health and well-being.
Works cited
World Health Organization. (n.d.). Stronger collaboration, better health: The global action plan for healthy lives and well-being for all. https://www.who.int/initiatives/sdg3-global-action-plan
United Nations. (2021). Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages. United Nations. Sustainable Development Goals. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/health/
Min, Y. & Perucci, F. (2020, August 27). UN/DESA Policy Brief #81: Impact of COVID-19 on SDG progress: a statistical perspective. United Nations. https://www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/publication/un-desa-policy-brief-81-impact-of-covid-19-on-sdg-progress-a-statistical-perspective/
Votruba, N., Thornicroft, G., & FundaMentalSDG Steering Group. (2016). Sustainable development goals and mental health: learnings from the contribution of the FundaMentalSDG global initiative. Global mental health (Cambridge, England), 3, e26. https://doi.org/10.1017/gmh.2016.20
Khetrapal, S., & Bhatia, R. (2020). Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on health system & Sustainable Development Goal 3. The Indian journal of medical research, 151(5), 395–399. https://doi.org/10.4103/ijmr.IJMR_1920_20
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