The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight international development goals that all 191 UN member states have agreed to try to achieve by 2015. The United Nations Millennium Declaration, signed in September 2000, consign world leaders to combat poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women. The goals in MDGs are derivative from this declaration. Several of these goals are directly related to health.

The internationally agreed framework of 8 goals and 18 targets was complemented by 48  indicators to measure progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. The Eight Millennium Development Goals and eighteen targets are:

Goal 1: To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Target 1: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1.25 a day
Target 2: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger

Goal 2: To achieve universal primary education
Target 3: Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike,will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling 

Goal 3: To promote gender equality and empower women
Target 4:  Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015

Goal 4: To reduce child mortality
Target 5:  Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate

Goal 5: To improve maternal health
Target 6: Reduce by three-quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio

Goal 6: To combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
Target 7: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS
Target 8: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.

Goal 7: To ensure environmental sustainability
Target 9:  Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources
Target 10: Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation
Target 11: Have achieved by 2020 a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers

Goal 8: To develop a global partnership for development
Target 12: Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, nondiscriminatory trading and financial system (includes a commitment to good governance, development, and poverty reduction both nationally and internationally)
Target 13: Address the special needs of the Least Developed Countries (includes tariff- and quota-free access for Least Developed Countries exports, enhanced program of debt relief for heavily indebted poor countries [HIPCs] and cancellation of official bilateral debt, and more generous official development assistance for countries committed to poverty reduction)
Target 14: Address the special needs of landlocked developing countries and small island developing states (through the Program of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States and 22nd General Assembly provisions)
Target 15: Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long term
Target 16: In cooperation with developing countries, develop and implement strategies for decent and productive work for youth
Target 17: In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries
Target 18: In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications technologies.

The MDGs are inter-dependent; all the MDG influence health, and health influences all the MDGs. For example, better health facilitate children to learn and adults to earn. Gender equality is necessary to the reaching of better health. Reducing poverty, hunger and environmental degradation positively influences, but also depends on, better health.

Indian statistics related to MDGs
Goal 1 : To eradicate poverty and hunger
Mid meal for children

Goal 2: To achieve universal primary education
Enrolment across different education level
Literacy rate of India

Goal 3: To promote gender equality
Child sex ratio
State wise share of female workers
Female literacy Rate
Women participating in lok sabha

Goal 4: To reduce child mortality
State/UT wise Crude birth rate
Neo-Natal Mortality Rate in India, 2005-2010
State/UT-wise Infant Mortality Rate, 2000 and 2011
Infant mortality rate

Goal 5: To combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
Adult HIV Prevalence Rate of the States Lying Above National Estimate
Adult HIV prevalence
HIV Infections in Top Eight High Prevalence States of India

References:  UNmillennium project
www.who.int
www.undp.org
www.who.int
www.who.int