Sustainable Development Goal 3 aims to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages. Its targets include reducing global maternal, neonatal and under-5 mortality; ending epidemics of communicable diseases like AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria; and reducing premature mortality from non-communicable diseases by 2030.
Our collection highlights research aimed at advancing work towards this goal through progress on drug development, infectious disease, and women and children’s health. Immunization is one of the most cost-effective ways of preventing communicable diseases and furthering research on both vaccines themselves as well as accessibility and take-up is vital to reaching communicable disease targets.
As we reach the halfway point between when the goals were decided in 2015 and their deadline of 2030, the UN emphasizes that the goals are just that – targets not guarantees, and for many of the goals we are far behind where we should be. However, compared to its hindrance of other goals, the COVID-19 pandemic showed in fact that reaching the targets for Goal 3 could be possible if the political will is there.
The response to the pandemic in producing new vaccines in record-breaking time and rolling out mass vaccination at an unprecedented scale can give us hope for what can be achieved but, as we face a post-pandemic economic downturn, it is vital that funding sustainable development remains a priority around the world.
Similarly, we must continue to push for open access to research covering these important topics so that not only researchers but also policymakers and actors on the ground can access the latest research. All Hindawi publications are open access, making it easier for policymakers and practitioners around the world to access the materials they need to make important decisions in their work towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
The articles in our Spotlight on Good Health and Well-Being cover a range of topics from identifying new vaccine targets and modelling transmission dynamics to improving vaccination uptake.
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This blog post is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY). Illustration by David Jury/Samuel Jennings.