SDG 3: good health and well-being

The third global goal is to ensure good health and well-being worldwide once the SDGs are due in 2030. While reaching this goal includes overcoming numerous challenges, the global community is on a good path to improving collective health and fighting the most important physical and mental health issues of our times.

Video Transcript

The third Sustainable Development Goal put forth by the United Nations is to “ensure healthy lives and promote well being for all at all ages.” 

In a way, promoting well being through sustainability is the goal of all of the SDGs, but SDG 3 deals more immediately with issues of illness and mortality. 

Starting at the very beginning of life, SDG 3 aims to significantly reduce maternal, infant, and under-five mortality. In 2015, over 300,000 women died unnecessarily in child-birth, unnecessarily because the majority of these deaths could have been prevented had the women had adequate access to maternal care. Access to care is on the rise, with 80% of births globally in 2018 being performed by a skilled attendant or doctor, as compared to70%  in 2012, but not every region enjoys equal access.

Concerning infant and under-five mortality, a child has a much higher chance of living to adulthood if they can survive the hard first five years or life, and SDG 3 is working towards an under-five mortality rate no higher than 25 per 1000 births. Progress towards this goal is going strong, with the number of under-five mortalities per year being cut in half from 2000 to 2017, thanks to an increase in access to proper care and equipment.

Another way the UN hopes to improve the well being of mothers and children is by ensuring that women have access to proper sex education and contraception. This goes hand-in-hand with decreasing the number of adolescent mothers in the world. The idea is that we want to encourage women to become mothers only when they have the means and maturity to properly look after another life. Progress on this front is slower, especially in regions where adolescent mothers are culturally accepted and contraception is rejected, like in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In a slightly different vein, SDG 3 also encompasses the goal to “end the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and neglected tropical diseases and combat hepatitis, water-borne diseases and other communicable diseases.” While progress towards eradicating these diseases continues, it has slowed considerably, to a point where more effort and investment in treatments is greatly needed if we hope to meet the goals. 

Other major causes of premature death and unhappiness that we hope to reduce, if not get rid of entirely, include cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes – some of the biggest killers in the developed world. Reducing air pollution and the rate of smoking are good markers of progress, and their  decrease would go a long way in decreasing the instances of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Improving sanitation and hygiene and decreasing road accidents play a role in reducing premature deaths as well.

SDG 3 also aims to improve the mental health of people around the world. Suicide is still the second leading cause of death among 15 to 29 year olds, but progress has been made with the global rate going down to 11 per 100,000 in 2016 from 13 per 100,000 in 2013.

To reach these goals, the role of infrastructure, research, and outreach cannot be understated. SDG 3 hopes to achieve universal health coverage, meaning access to essential healthcare services and safe, effective, and affordable essential medicines and vaccines. Increasing the amount invested in healthcare and research, and improving the development of health care workforces, especially in developing countries, will be a large factor in our ability to move forward and meet the goals.

Though there are some set-backs and difficulties, progress continues to be made in ensuring healthy lives and promoting well being, but efforts and investments must increase even more if there is hope to meet the goals set out by SDG 3 in the decade to come.