The Millennium Development Goals were launched in September 2000 by 189 countries with the aim of eradicating poverty by 2015. The eight goals (Box 1.4) are intended to combat poverty, hunger, disease, environmental degradation and gender discrimination. Ethiopia has adopted this initiative and set its own eight goals which are: to reduce maternal mortality from greater than 871 to 392 per 100,000 live births, to reduce the under-five mortality rate by 85% and the infant mortality rate from 77 to 45 per 1,000 live births. Infectious disease targets include: maintaining the relatively low prevalence of HIV, reduction of TB-related deaths from 7% to 4% and malaria-related deaths from 22% to 10%.

The Health Service Extension Programme is an approach that is designed to achieve these goals.

Box 1.4 Millennium Development Goals

Goal 1: End extreme poverty and hunger

Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education

Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women

Goal 4: Reduce child mortality

Goal 5: Improve maternal health

Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability

Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development.

Look again carefully at Box 1.4. Which of the Millenium Development Goals do you think may be relevant to the work of Health Extension Practitioners?

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Health Extension Practitioners will be mostly involved in the health goals (4, 5 and 6), but of course all the other goals are interconnected as well. For example, health in any community is unlikely to improve unless gender inequality is also tackled.

Last modified: Tuesday, 1 July 2014, 7:44 PM