Effectiveness and Sustainability Must Be Part of the Post 2015 Agenda
I came across this article yesterday about the post 2015 agenda and I would like to make a few points based on my experience of the last 10 years working to achieve the MDGs. Essentially, we need to highlight the importance of including effectiveness and sustainability in the post 2015 agenda.
1. Yes, the MDGs galvanized international efforts but it took them several years after the Millennium Declaration of the year 2000 for the international efforts to be aligned with the MDG agenda and for international organizations, donors and foundations to harmonize their approaches. It was not until 2005, that the Paris Declaration addressed the problem of ineffective aid, poor accountability structures and management as well as lack of coordination and collaboration. Much has improved but still, every organization is well-meaning doing their thing and not effectively collaborating to strengthen the country’s structures and do not effectively transfer knowledge and technology. For example, a donor pays for and NGO to implement a project to improve HIV/AIDS services. The NGO works in a few provinces and trains health staff to provide HIV/AIDS counseling and testing and then leaves. They did not change the job descriptions of the staff they trained to ensure HIV/AIDS counseling and testing are part of their new job description. They did not change the supervision system to include the supervision of the new counseling and testing activities and they did not help the health staff to change their work routines to include the new ones in the context of all the activities they are responsible for. And even worse, they did not transfer their training tools and manuals and experience to the country’s medical and nursing schools so future generations also know what the NGO taught. In addition the NGO did not coordinate their work with those working to improve the supply of HIV/AIDS and other medicines and of laboratory testing supplies to ensure a sustained supply, or with those that are improving the health facilities to ensure they maintain the facilities up to standards of hygiene required for patients that have their immune system compromised. No, the NGO just did their thing. They did not focus on making sure their work was effective and sustainable after the project ended.
2. Many of the 2015 MDG targets have not been met and effective work needs to go on until met and exceeded. MDG4 asked for reducing half of the child mortality rate. This target was not achieved and the other half is still pending. It is important that the post 2015 agenda include effective and sustainable strategies for achieving the unfinished agenda. For example, each country must increase by at least 10 % every year the number of public and private clinics, hospitals and health centers that meet internationally accepted quality standards of child health care. In this way, in 10 years, the unfinished agenda will be completed. By international standards, I mean: complete immunizations, child is breastfed and weight monitored monthly, sleeps under a mosquito net to prevent malaria and mother knows how to detect danger signs of dehydration and pneumonia, the main killers of children under 5 so she can take the child to the clinic or health center in a timely manner.
Effectiveness and sustainability must be part of the new agenda so we stop these ineffective practices and Sudan and other countries can really get ahead by receiving effective aid.
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