Analysis of Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 5 in Haiti: A Report

This report analyzes Haiti's progress toward Millennium Development Goal 5, which focuses on reducing poverty and hunger. It highlights the health challenges in Haiti, including malnutrition and HIV, and assesses the country's progress in reducing mortality and underweight rates. The report emphasizes the critical role of nurses in addressing these issues through advocacy, health promotion, and education. It also examines health disparities, particularly among African populations, and proposes nursing strategies such as health education and early screening to improve health outcomes. The study draws from various research sources to provide a comprehensive overview of Haiti's health landscape and the interventions needed to achieve the MDG 5 targets.

Running head: MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENTAL GOAL (MDG)
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction:
The world health organization is a specified agency of the United Nations that is
work with international public health. The world health organization plays a vital part in the
worldwide governance of disease and heath (Who.int. 2019). It makes an significant influence to
economic progress, as it aims to achieve healthy population with greater life span, more
productive and save factors which influence the status and a country’s ability probity to provide
best possible care to the patients. In order to improve international public health, all 191
members of the united nation have developed eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and
agreed to achieve the goals by 2015 (Satterthwaite, 2016). The members of it declared as well as
a signed in September 2000 commits with an intention of combating poverty, hunger, disease,
literacy, environmental sustainability and discrimination within women (Who.int., 2019). The
purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the health issue in Haiti and Millennium
Developmental Goal (MDG) to reduce the health issues which would be discussed in the
following paragraphs.
Global health goals:
For this assignment, the chosen goal out of eight goals of Millennium Developmental
Goal (MDG) is the first goal, to eliminate extreme poverty and hunger. As discussed above in
order to address a public health concern, the Millennium Development goal was developed .
While some countries have made an impressive gain in achieving these goals, others failed to
achieve it. The prime objective of this goal is to attain food security and improved nutrition as
well as to promote sustainable agriculture (Simon et al., 2016). This goal is crucial since more
than 759 million people in the global population do not have adequate food to lead a healthy and
active life, accountable for one in nine people in the world (Undp.org., 2019). The prime cause

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behind this hunger is poverty as well as lack resources and an estimated 7.6 million children died
in 2010 (Battersby , 2017).. In underdeveloped countries, 40 to 75% of the children are
malnourished and experienced deficiencies of zinc, vitamin A; the death associated with hunger
is 45% (Henry-Lee, 2016). Hence, this goal is crucial to achieving in order to reduce the global
reduce the chronic disease such as pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria cholera. In developing
countries, the rate declined from 28% to 17% which is very close to the target (Henry-Lee,
2016).
Country and Goal Progress:
For this assignment, the chosen country is Haiti. In April 2017, Haiti had the lowest
variability of food in the world and 50% of Haiti;’ population is undernourished. One in five
children are malnourished and one in fourteen children die before age five. Incidence of poverty
is 59% or 6.3 million people. However, Haiti has made vast progress in achieving the first goal
of millennium development (Undp.org., 2019). The indicator for progress is reduced
malnutrition, mortality, and underweight. In Haiti, children under 5 years who were severely
underweight went from 27.5% in 1998 to 11.4% in 2012, a decrease in the rate of nearly 60%
(Undp.org., 2019). The mortality rate has also been decreased since 1995, went from 109 deaths
per 1000 to 59 death (Undp.org., 2019). The country keeps a track to see the progress of
achievements of this first goal by measuring key indicators such as reduced poverty rate, rate of
underweight, malnutrition rate, rate of employment, malnutrition with the assistance of survey or
field-based observation (Babu, 2017)..
Nursing role:
In the current context, the first role is to develop advocacy regarding the low
nutritional resources of Haiti. By developing advocacy against the low nutritional resources,

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nurses would be able to end the malnutrition, improve maternal parental nutrition as well as
infant nutrition (Eldredge et al., 2017). Nurses would be able to involve in the amending major
government policies to end hunger (Cesario, 2016). The second role is to develop health
promotional program with the intention of improving the health literacy and nutritional resources
to the family. Health literacy through health promotion would provide education regarding
eating proper nutrition’s, healthy diet and providing nutritional resources would improve the
nutritional status, immunity, malnutrition, and weight (Sallis, Owen & Fisher, 2015).
Health disparities and findings:
Health disparities refer to the changes in the health status of the different groups of
people which can be preventable. These differences include health outcome, access to the health
care and differences in life span which arise because of difference in ethnicity and culture
between populations. In Haiti, 70% of Africans are presented who are experiencing a lack of
health care access which further affected their health (Matousek et al., 2017). As discussed by
Richterman et al. (2016), HIV infection is the leading cause of death in Africans of Haiti,
accounting for both 5.8 and 21.6% of death in African adolescents and adults. In 2016, 150,000
people are living with HIV in 2016 and it’ s percentage is highest amongst this group (Louis et
al., 2019). The HIV infection rates are 1.5 times higher in this population which further
increased the death rates amongst (Louis et al., 2019). The lack of health care access reduces
access to modern medicines and early screening of HIV infection as well as advanced health
interventions as well as health literacy (Kershar, Small & Gupta, 2016),. Hence, in order to
improve the health status of this population Haiti, greater access to the health care sector is
required which improve early screening of the infection and reduce the mortality rate associated
with it.

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Nursing strategies:
In order to eliminate the health inequality, one of the powerful strategy, in this
case, is providing health education to the population with HIV and other individuals of the
community. Health education or health literacy can be provided by nurses regarding transmission
way of HIV infection, possible routes and consequences of HIV infection (Pachankis et al.,
2016). Registered nurses are required to provide education regarding safe sexual practice where
every partner is required to use a condom to reduce the transmission of HIV virus and associated
sexually transmitted disease and require to engage in the habit of seeking clinical assistance
where required (Greensides et al., 2015). It would reduce the health care disparities for the
disadvantageous groups by giving accurate interventions, access to health care and health
literacy. The second strategy is to providing health care access for the earlier screening of disease
(Pachankis et al., 2016). Nurses are required to develop a community program with the
collaboration of the local government in order to promote early screening facilities where young
adults aged in between 18 to 36 years would be screened for their early symptoms of infections
(Ruria et al., 2017). A comfortable environment would be created in order to promote
empowerment and stigma.
Conclusion:
Thus on a concluding note, it can be said that the world health organization plays an
critical role in the worldwide governance of disease and heath with the intention of reducing the
global burden of disease. One of the interventions to reduce the disparities would be eight
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which was designed for struggle poverty, hunger,
disease, literacy, environmental sustainability, and discrimination within women. In Haiti, the
first goal was achieved which were observed by a reduced rate of malnutrition, underweight and

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mortality. These can be reduced by nursing advocacy and health promotion program.
Considering health disparities, Africans are the ethnic group with the highest rate of HIV
infection because of a lack of health care. This problem can be resolved by nursing strategies
such as health education and early screening.
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