BACKGROUND The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were 'top-down' goals formulated by policy elites drawing from targets within United Nations (UN) summits and conferences in the 1990s. Contemporary processes shaping the new post-2015 development agenda are more collaborative and participatory, markedly different to the pre-MDG era. This study examines what would the outcome be if a methodolog...

In this article, we highlight key considerations for better addressing sexual and reproductive health and rights issues within universal health coverage (UHC), particularly in the context of the post-2015 sustainable development agenda. We look at UHC as a health, development and health care financing issue, and its history. We discuss its limitations as currently understood from a human rights...

In 2013, the fifth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD V) will be hosted by the Japanese government. TICAD, which has been held every five years, has played a catalytic role in African policy dialogue and a leading role in promoting the human security approach (HSA). We review the development of the HSA in the TICAD dialogue on health agendas and recommend TICAD's role ...

Background Maternal health remains a central policy concern in Vietnam. With a commitment to achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 5 target of maternal mortality rate (MMR) of 70/100 000 by 2015, the Ministry of Health (MoH) issued the National Plan for Safe Motherhood (NPSM) 2003-2010. In 2008, reproductive health, including safe motherhood (SM) became a national health target progra...

binagwaho and colleagues’ perspective piece provided a timely reflection on the experience of rwanda in achieving the millennium development goals (mdgs) and a proposal of 5 principles to carry forward in post-2015 health development. this commentary echoes their viewpoints and offers three lessons for health policy reforms consistent with these principles beyond 2015. specifically, we argue th...

As the international community discusses the post-2015 development agenda, it is now clear that inequality will form an integral part of the sustainable development goals. Empirical evidence shows that increasing income inequality has been a feature of the world economy since the early 1980s. The current pattern of global income distribution is extremely unequal, both between countries and with...