Linkages between health and social protection
How much would poor people gain from faster progress towards the Millennium Development Goals for health?
Achieving the health MDGs: pro-poor focus needed for benefits to reach the most disadvantaged
Authors:
D. R. Gwatkin
Publisher:
The Lancet, 2005
This article, published in The Lancet, explores what further progress towards the health objectives set out in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will mean for the poor. The author notes that, unlike the MDGs overall, these health objectives do not focus specifically on poor people. Rather, they call for improvements in national averages that can be achieved through gains in both advantaged and disadvantaged groups. As a result, any reduction in society-wide average rates of death or illness can provide a wide range of outcomes for poor people.
The author emphasises that the effects of expanding health services tend to be unequally distributed. He argues that expanded health services typically reach better-off groups before disadvantaged ones. Therefore, efforts to accelerate progress towards the MDGs by providing additional resources to the health sector are unlikely to primarily benefit poor people. The author suggests that a more likely scenario is faster progress among privileged groups and a rise in poor-rich health disparities. In order to avoid such an outcome, efforts to achieve the health MDGs will need to focus on reaching disadvantaged groups more effectively in addition to merely expanding health activities. [adapted from author]
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