Millennium Development Goal 6: AIDS and the International Health Agenda

Abstract

Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 6, ‘to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases’, is unique among the MDGs because it emerged in the context of unprecedented prior international mobilization, especially around HIV/AIDS, thus both reflecting and facilitating an expanding international health agenda. MDG 6 built on the idea of “health as development”, originally articulated at the 1978 conference on primary health at Alma-Ata, but was profoundly shaped by the political traction and fund-raising successes of AIDS activism and the international AIDS response. This underpinned the expansion of MDG 6 targets to include antiretroviral treatment, helped forge partnerships to reduce the prices of antiretroviral treatment and essential medicine, thereby contributing to MDG 8 (“building partnerships for development”) and, in high HIV-prevalence regions, also to MDGs 4 and 5 (maternal and child health). The UN High-Level Panel on the post-2015 development agenda recommends setting country-level health targets to achieve healthcare for all. Targets can help citizens hold governments to account by providing a focus for mobilization and a yardstick to measure progress. The data collection and policy monitoring pioneered by UNAIDS, and the involvement and support for civil society organizations achieved through the AIDS response, must be continued for this broader health agenda to succeed.