Singapore leads the world in progress toward the health Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Singapore is closer than any other country in the world to achieving the health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), according to new research published in The Lancet. Singapore’s score of 86.8 on the SDG index includes particularly high marks for decreasing child mortality, building resilience to natural disasters, and mitigating violence.

"Singapore leads the world on the health-related SDG index because it performed well across many priority health areas, which range from maternal and child health to violence and conflict. Singapore scored particularly well, relative to all other countries, on disaster mortality, under-5 and neo-natal mortality, malaria incidence, prevalence of neglected tropical diseases, household air pollution, and other indicators," said the Nancy Fullman, MPH, of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and the study’s lead author.

The study on progress toward the SDGs for Singapore and 187 other countries was published today in The Lancet. The paper is part of the Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD), which is conducted by a global consortium of researchers and coordinated by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). The paper was published to coincide with the release of a report by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Goalkeepers: The Stories Behind the Data, is the foundation’s first annual progress report on the SDGs; it is produced in partnership with IHME.

The research shows that there are opportunities to improve performance by 2030, even for the world’s most impoverished countries. The report recommends increased multi-sectoral commitments to ensure that all countries can meet the health goals.

The GBD is the largest and most comprehensive epidemiological effort to quantify health loss across places and over time. It draws on the work of more than 2,500 collaborators from more than 130 countries and territories. IHME coordinates the study. This year, more than 13 billion data points are included.