HOWIF supports Sustainable Development Goals

Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

Ensuring healthy lives and promoting the well-being for all at all ages is essential to sustainable development. Significant strides have been made in increasing life expectancy and reducing some of the common killers associated with child and maternal mortality. Major progress has been made on increasing access to clean water and sanitation, reducing malaria, tuberculosis, polio and the spread of HIV/AIDS. However, many more efforts are needed to fully eradicate a wide range of diseases and address many different persistent and emerging health issues.

Goal 3 Targets

(i) Reducing, by 2030, the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100,000 live births,
(ii) Ending preventable deaths of newborns and children under 5 years of age,
(iii) Ending the epidemic of AIDS, TB, malaria and neglected tropical diseases and combat hepatitis, water-borne diseases and other communicable diseases,
(iv) Reducing by one third premature mortality from Non-communicable Diseases (NCDs)through prevention and treatment and promote mental health and wellbeing,
(v) Strengthening the prevention and treatment of substance abuse, including narcotic drug abuse and harmful use of alcohol. (vi) The Goal also includes halving by 2020 the number of global deaths and injuries from road traffic accidents and ensuring, by 2030, universal access to sexual and reproductive healthcare services, including for family planning,information and education, and the integration of reproductive health into national strategies and programs, among others.

The progress in the health sector so far is encouraging. The NMR and U5MR have come down to 23, and 38 per 1,000 live births in 2015, respectively. Similarly, MMRhas also declined to 258 (per 100,000 livebirths), and several recent observations indicatethat this must have further decreasedas the Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (CPR) has increased to 47.1 percent in 2015, whilethe Total Fertility Rate (TFR) has decreased to 2.3 in 2015. Furthermore, adolescent fertility rate remains high at 71 live births per 1000 women aged 10-14.
Currently, the number of new HIV infections among adults aged 15-49 years (per 1000 uninfected population) is 0.03 percent.
The prevalence of TB, Lymphatic Filariasis, and Dengue cases has declined markedly to 158 (per 100,000 live births), 30,000 and 728, respectively as reported in 2015. Similarly, the number of cases of Malaria, Kala-azar, Rabies, Trachoma, and Cysticercoids has also decreased. Nepal’s challenge henceforth is to confront hepatitis, water-borne diseases, and communicable diseases.
Premature mortality from NCDs is increasing, indicated by the rate of NCD deaths being 43.7 percent of all deaths. The incidence of suicide cases is also increasing (16.5 per 100,000 people).
Mortality related to Road Traffic Accidents (RTA) is nearly 20 per 100,000 people.
The proposed SDG 3 targets include the reduction of MMR to less than 70 per 100,000 live births by 2030 which is in line with the global target. The child health targets include reduction of preventable death of newborn and children to less than one percent. However, for overall newborn and U5 mortality rates, the target is to reduce them from 23 and 38 per thousand live births to 12 and 20, respectively, by 2030.
The other targets include elimination of the prevalence of HIV, TB, Malaria and other tropical diseases, and water borne diseases.
Global targets for 2030 are also set to reduce NCDs to one–third of the existing level and to increase health care expenditure to at least 7 per cent from 5 percent of GDP in 2015.
The other targets are to increase CPR (modern methods) to 60 percent, raise the proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel to 90 percent, increase institutional delivery to 90 percent and the proportion of women of reproductive age (aged 15-49 years) who have their need for family planning satisfied with modern methods to 80 percent.

Source: National Planning Commission, Government of Nepal.