Response to Amir Attaran 英文参考文献.docVIP

Open access, freely available online Correspondence Response to Amir Attaran MDGs with the same brush. In addition to the example of child mortality rates cited in the article, several other MDG indicators can be measured quite well. These indicators include anthropometric measures of malnutrition, primary school enrollment, gender parity in education, and access to basic infrastructure services. John W. McArthur, Jeffrey D. Sachs, Guido Schmidt- Traub Amir Attaran’s Policy Forum [1] raises important points on the poor quality of data for some indicators used to measure progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but, sadly, uses these ?ndings to draw the wrong conclusions. The evidence he presents on a small number of indicators is partial, and does not justify his conclusion that the MDGs might become a liability and are doomed to fail. Quite the opposite is the case. Of course the data on the world’s extremely poor people are weak, as is just about every other aspect of efforts vis-a-vis the poor. The rich countries dramatically underinvest and make far too little effort in helping to save the poor from dying of malaria and tuberculosis (TB). It is, therefore, no surprise that developing countries and the international system lack the resources and operational support to measure malaria and TB well. Attaran’s criticisms in this regard are justi?ed and have been made by many others before him, including many professionals working for the United Nations (UN) system. The MDGs are a political commitment made by the 189 countries represented at the 2000 Millennium Summit to halve extreme poverty in its many forms by 2015. The author ignores that such broad outcome goals adopted by world leaders are distinct from the technical question, how to de?ne and measure corresponding indicators, which the UN has been asked to help answer. It is, therefore, inaccurate to blame the UN system for setting goals that are dif?cult to measure. Goal setting is the prerog