title: Improving the world's health through the post-2015 development agenda: perspectives from Rwanda.
abstract: The world has made a great deal of progress through the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to improve the health and well-being of people around the globe, but there remains a long way to go. Here we provide reflections on Rwanda's experience in working to meet the health-related targets of the MDGs. This experience has informed our proposal of five guiding principles that may be useful for countries to consider as the world sets and moves forward with the post-2015 development agenda. These include: 1) advancing concrete and meaningful equity agendas that drive the post-2015 goals; 2) ensuring that goals to meet Universal Health Coverage (UHC) incorporate real efforts to focus on improving quality and not only quantity of care; 3) bolstering education and the internal research capacity within countries so that they can improve local evidence-based policy-making; 4) promoting intersectoral collaboration to achieve goals, and 5) improving collaborations between multilateral agencies - that are helping to monitor and evaluate progress towards the goals that are set - and the countries that are working to achieve improvements in health within their nation and across the world.
authors.affiliation: Minister of Health, Kigali, Rwanda. ; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. ; Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth University, Hanover, NH, USA.
authors.forename: Agnes
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Binagwaho
authors.affiliation: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Kirstin W
authors.initials: KW
authors.lastname: Scott
keywords: Global Health; Information and Communication Technologies (ICT); Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); Post-2015 Development Agenda; Rwanda; Universal Health Coverage (UHC)
references.citation: Lancet. 2013 Jan 19;381(9862):179-80
references.pmid: 23332947
references.citation: N Engl J Med. 2013 Nov 21;369(21):2054-9
references.pmid: 24256385
references.citation: BMJ. 2013 Jan 18;346:f65
references.pmid: 23335479
references.citation: Pan Afr Med J. 2012;13:31
references.pmid: 23330022
references.citation: Nurs Outlook. 2013 May-Jun;61(3):137-44
references.pmid: 23164530
references.citation: N Engl J Med. 2014 Jul 3;371(1):3-5
references.pmid: 24988552
references.citation: Lancet. 2014 Jul 26;384(9940):371-5
references.pmid: 24703831
references.citation: Nature. 2012 Jul 04;487(7405):39
references.pmid: 22763542