Grand convergence: A future sustainable development goal?

摘要

On Jan 16, in the North Lawn Building of the United Nations in New York, Norway's Permanent Representative to the UN, Mr Geir Pedersen, is hosting an event that just might change the course of negotiations on the future of sustainable development. The meeting is based on the findings of the Lancet Commission on Investing in Health, "Global Health 2035: a world converging within a generation". Margaret Kruk, one of the commissioners on the Global Health 2035 report, will chair a discussion that includes the Rwandan Minister of Health, Agnes Binagwaho, the President of the Public Health Foundation of India, Srinath Reddy, the US Assistant Administrator for Global Health, Ariel Pablos-Mendez, and Gavin Yamey from the University of California, San Francisco (who led the writing of the report). Their task will be to map "a new pathway to close the health gap between countries". What might that new pathway be? To choose the idea of grand convergence-a reduction in preventable infectious, maternal, and child deaths to universally low levels-as a sustainable development goal (SDG) after 2015.