Sustainable Developmental Goals interrupted: Overcoming challenges to global child and adolescent health

• Type of Material: Article
• Authors: Zulfiqar A Bhutta, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto; Kathryn Yount, Emory University; Quique Bassat, University of Barcelona; Caitlin E Moyer, Public Library of Science, San Francisco
• Language: English
• Date: 2021-09-01
• Publisher: PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
• Publication Version: Final Published Version
• Copyright Statement: © 2021 Bhutta et al.
• License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Final Published Version (URL): http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1003802
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: PLOS MEDICINE
• Volume: 18
• Issue: 9
• Start Page: e1003802
• End Page: e1003802
• Grant/Funding Information: The authors received no specific funding for this work.
• Keywords: Life Sciences & Biomedicine; General & Internal Medicine; Science & Technology; Medicine, General & Internal

Abstract

Few predicted, in September 2015, when the millennium development goals (MDGs) closed and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were signed into a global compact, that we might soon face the largest global public health challenge in over a century. Not only has COVID-19 killed nearly five million people to date [1], and upended global economies, but it has also seriously impacted child health and development across the world, especially in low- and lower middle-income countries (LLMICs) [2]. For the first time in living memory, over 1.6 billion children are out of school [3] and efforts on reopening schools have sparked rancorous and divisive debates. There are legitimate concerns that COVID-19 has negatively impacted progress in achieving the SDGs globally, and that urgent redirective strategies are needed before hard-earned gains from the 2000–2015 MDG period are reversed [4].