MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS (MDGs)
Series of targets included in the United Nations Millennium Declaration adopted in 2000. Since then the countries have been committed to cooperating globally in order to reduce extreme poverty and its strictly connected consequences. These goals are supposed to be reached by 2015: to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, by halving the number of people whose income is less than 1 dollar a day and achieving full and productive employment and a decent work for all including women and young people; to provide universal education, making sure for all chidren to be able to complete a full course of primary school; to promote gender equality, eliminating disparity in all levels of education; to protect child health, reducing by two thrds the under-five mortality rate; to improve maternal health, decreasing by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio and obtaining universal access to reproductive health; to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS and of the other major diseases like malaria, getting universal access to treatment for all those who need it; to ensure environmental sustainability, adapting policies and programs to the principles of sustainability and reacting to the loss of natural resources and biodiversity, halving the population without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation, getting a significant life condition improvement for 100million people; to fotser a global partnership; thanks to cooperation the industrialized countries should develop an open, rule-based and non-discriminatory trading and financial system, address the special needs of the lest developing countries and deal with their debts reasonably. Collaborating pharmaceutical companies could help in providing access to affordable essential drugs, while the private sector could act in favor of spreading the benefits of new technologies, especially of information and communication.