Sustainable Development Goal 3

Health and Well-being of Ageing in Hong Kong

Ben Y. F. Fong, Vincent T. S. Law

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000544299
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Economics

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to develop a better and sustainable future for the world, and the goals are part of an action plan to address poverty, hunger, health, gender equity and various pressing world issues. One of these goals looks at health and wellness. Ageing populations have become a crucial issue worldwide, and this short monograph explores ageing and how the consequences of an ageing population may affect our healthcare system through a case study on Hong Kong's population.

The book looks at several critical health issues related to ageing. The elderly, particularly those with low socio-economic status, rely more on acute-centric care rather than primary care. The book suggests that secondary care service may only be effective to a limited extent as a healthcare measure and an optimum healthcare system should be one that focuses on primary care. The authors put forth a compelling argument for disease prevention and screening schemes and explain how they are more cost-effective and beneficial to society and the system.

This thoughtful book will provide beneficial insights into the relationship of ageing and Sustainable Development Goals in the context of health and wellness for policymakers and healthcare professionals.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

1 Global impacts of the Sustainable Development Goals

DOI: 10.4324/9781003220169-1

The United Nations (UN) is showing supremely aspirational and transformational visions to resolve unpleasant life events that threaten human beings through the development of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with 169 targets in 2015 (United Nations, 2021a). The Division for Sustainable Development Goals (DSDG) in the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) aims to offer substantive support and capacity-building for all the SDGs with its purposes and principles that are fully compatible with international laws, with respect to issues concerning water, energy, climate, oceans, urbanisation, transport, science and technology. The ambition of the SDGs is to apply to all nations, particularly the developing countries, in creating a new worldview that may help them to mobilise collective actions and share information with the developed countries. All 17 SDGs are adopted by all member states of the UN with the objectives to end poverty and hunger, to achieve equalities within and among countries, to build peaceful societies, to protect human rights and to protect the lasting natural resources from climate change. To achieve the SDGs, policy changes and political work will certainly require entrepreneurial actions at this stage. The policymakers have to focus more on the collaboration efforts between developing and developed countries. Although progress on achieving the SDGs by 2030 is much being disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, different countries are making some ongoing progress towards different SDGs. An overview of the 17 SDGs and the achievements with multi-targets that pursue global development and international collaboration in developing and developed countries are described for each SDG with case examples from different parts of the world.

Goal 1: end poverty in all its forms everywhere

SDG 1 is set up to end all the poverty, improve social protection and ensure the poor and the vulnerable have equal access to economic resources by 2030. It also targets building the resilience of the poor and vulnerable, and reducing the exposure to negative consequences caused by extreme events or environmental disasters. Creating sound social protection policy frameworks from the international levels, it supports increased investment in eradicating poverty.

Ending extreme poverty should be prioritised as one in ten people still suffer from acute poverty every day (Dhahri & Omri, 2020). The savings-based microfinance programme carried out by Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere, better and widely known as CARE International and founded in 1945, in various parts of Zimbabwe have helped people to improve household livelihoods by acquiring physical farming assets, such as wheelbarrows, ploughs and hoes (Kabonga et al., 2021). Among the emerging economies, India has the largest reduction in extreme poverty. The Government of India has implemented multipronged welfare scheme in areas of health, education, housing, skills development and social protection, resulting in increased pension and health insurance coverage, and decreased proportion of homeless people and poverty gap ration between rural and urban areas (Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, 2021). Whereas in China and Mexico, the rural minimum living standard guarantee (Dibao) programme and conditional cash transfer programme have benefited 75 and 32 million individuals, respectively (Hanna & Olken, 2018). China announced in 2021 the eradication of poverty, which has been regarded as a very special experience involving massive mobilisation of resources while not affecting the already fast development in other parts of the vast country at the same time. It is suggested to study the Chinese experience around the world, particularly the poor nations (Global Times, 2021).

Goal 2: end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture

SDG 2 desires to end hunger and achieve food security by all people, in particular the poor and vulnerable people, by 2030. It is also promoting agricultural productivity, including resources and inputs, knowledge of financial services, and opportunities for small-scale food producers. These strategies can help to promote genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants and domestic animals, thus ensuring sustainable food production systems. To encourage and increase productivity in developing countries, technology development in agricultural research is also targeted.

African countries are unlikely to achieve the SDG 2 “Zero Hunger” by 2030. The food insecurity experience scale had measured a moderate to severe food insecurity from 2014 to 2019, and the estimated rate of under-nourishment would be increased from 19.1% to 25.7% by 2030 (Atukunda et al., 2021). Therefore, African governments are collaborating with several specialised UN agencies to carry out programmes to end hunger. For instance, the Monitoring and Analysing Food and Agricultural Policies (MAFAP) provides evidence to support informed policy dialogue at the national, regional and international levels that helps to understand how different food and agricultural policies work in various contexts across the 14 Sub-Saharan African countries (Pernechele et al., 2018). The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN provides education to communities on good farming practices to increase incomes. Another example is changing the social norms and preventing excluding women from resource ownership and farming services in the UN Development Programme. Such collective commitment involving different stakeholders is important in helping African countries to strive for zero hunger in the long term (Pernechele et al., 2018).

Pertinently, a good agroforestry system ensures a sustainable food production system and helps to maintain well-established agricultural practices to sustain SDG 2 in both developing and developed countries (Montagnini & Metzel, 2017). The project “Tree Crops Development in Africa and Asia to Benefit the Poor”, active in Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Mali and India, helps smallholder farming systems of fruits, nuts and oil seed trees to transit into semicommercial farming and large-scale commercial enterprises (Montagnini & Metzel, 2017). It involves research and development on soil conservation, genetic diversity and cultivation strategies for target tree plantation and related products. Thus, research can assist to identify the priorities of species most useful for alleviating food insecurity in each target region.

Goal 3: ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

SDG 3 aims at seeking more comprehensive healthy lives for all along each stage of life. The first target is to reduce the global maternal mortality ratio below 70 per 1 million live births and prevent deaths of newborns to 12 per 1,000 live births. Governments have to pay more attention to strengthen the foundation of healthy lives by achieving universal health coverage, prevention of substance abuse, and access to sexual and reproductive health-care services. Furthermore, epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and neglected tropical diseases should be ended, and research on vaccines and medicines for infectious diseases and non-communicable diseases (NCD) should be supported (UN, 2021b).

In the study by Fullman et al. (2017), they measured 37 health-related indicators worldwide, and gains and gaps for health-related performances varied across 188 developed and developing countries. The results showed that globally, 60% of countries were projected to achieve reduction in maternal mortality ratio, neonatal mortality and malaria, but only 6% and 3% of countries were projected to reduce mortality of NCD and suicide rate, respectively, by 2030 (Fullman et al., 2017). Issues of HIV, tuberculosis, childhood overweight and mortality of road injury are yet to demonstrate progressive achievement, as less than 7% of countries were projected to meet the SDG targets. The best performers of health-related SDGs are developed countries, such as the United Kingdom (UK), Australia and Canada, followed by some Western countries, like Spain, France and Portugal, as well as Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea. In terms of the universal health coverage index, Singapore, Iceland and Sweden scored the highest achievement of health-related SDGs, but the United States of America (USA) showed minimal gains despite its high economic income over the period of 1990–2016 (Fullman et al., 2017). Turkey, Cambodia and China, although not being ranked in top positions, have carried out health reforms and recorded having the most progressive improvement in health coverage since 2000. Strong government commitment to expand government-funded insurance schemes on essential medicines and public health has contributed to a rapid gain in health coverage in China (Fullman et al., 2017). While Turkey and Cambodia are facing challenges on regional instability and weak national insurance system, respectively, developing and least developed countries, such as Afghanistan, Central Africa Republic and Somalia, continue to have the worst healthcare performance due to civil unrest and violence (Fullman et al., 2017). The benefit and impact of this SDG to the elderly population in Hong Kong, with review of how the government, the healthcare profession and the community can and should cooperate to accomplish health improvement and quality of life among elderly, will be presented in the next chapter as a case study.

Goal 4: ensure inclusive and equitable quality education, and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

SDG 4 is striving for the accomplishment of free, equitable and quality education in primary and secondary schools for all girls and boys, and equal access to affordable tertiary education for all women and men. It also aims to ensure learners acquire knowledge and skills to achieve sustainable development by 2030. To achieve the success of inclusive and equitable quality education, the number of scholarships and qualified teachers through international cooperation for ongoing teacher training and continuing education needs to be expanded globally.

A lack of trained teachers and poor conditions of school sites, as well as the equity issues, are the major challenges in education systems. Latin American countries are still falling behind in educational provision, reflected from their non-significant increase in the priority given to public spending in education (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, 2014). The Mexican government has taken many initiatives to implement the SDGs with long-term visions, including improving educational provision and infrastructures. Meeting the demand of educational needs, the ‘Schools to 100’ programme and the National Educational Infrastructure Certificates improved 10,913 educational facilities across Mexico (Oxford Business Group, 2017). Moreover, the Mexican government has started to research on pedagogies of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education and introduced the disciplines of physics, chemistry and mathematics to children and teenagers (Montgomery & Fernández-Cárdenas, 2018). Importantly, 78.2% of the Mexican population aged 3 to 23 had enrolled in the National Education System by 2016 (Mexico Federal Government, 2018).

Goal 5: achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

SDG 5 targets to eliminate all types of discrimination, including negative stereotypes, both verbal or physical violence, and harmful practice, such as child, early and forced marriage, and female genital mutilation against women and girls (UN, 2021b). SDG 5 aims to eliminate gender inequality by ensuring women and girls equal opportunities for leadership and equal rights to economic resources.

Eliminating traditional patriarchy and sealed social norms can lead to gender equality. Due to the problem of child marriage, many women were married before 18 years old, and this local culture and social customs obviously hinder their future life planning. Moreover, some communities in Kenya and other areas in Africa still have a harmful and traditional practice of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGMC) that causes permanent damage (Achia, 2014). Kenya is one of the successful stories in the efforts to abandon the practice of FGMC as non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Kenya have been active in promoting social and educational campaigns to achieving health and gender equality (Grose et al., 2019). FGMC has become much less common than in the past three decades, and the government has planned to end it by 2022 (United Nations Children’s Fund, 2020).

In particular, women’s participation in elections is relatively passive around the world, with the rating of only 23.4% of women joining national parliaments in 2017 (Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2018). Under the influence of SDG 5, positive changes in cultural and social norms have resulted in the promotion of participation of women as voters, candidates and political party leaders. For instance, Argentina, Chile and Ecuador have adopted progressive legislation to promote female political leadership (Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2018).

Goal 6: ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all

SDG 6 aims to achieve equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water and available sanitation by 2030. It targets to increase sustainability of water use and improve water quality by reducing pollution and eliminating untreated wastewater in all sectors and facilities. To protect the whole water-related ecosystems, it emphasises the expansion of international cooperation on water and sanitation-related management, including waste-water treatment, a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents Page
• Foreword Page
• Acknowledgements Page
• Authors and co-authors Page
• 1 Global impacts of the Sustainable Development Goals
• 2 Ageing and Sustainable Development Goal 3 in Hong Kong
• 3 Interconnectedness of Sustainable Development Goal 3 and Sustainable Development Goals related to ageing
• 4 Effectiveness of policy and services in elderly care in Hong Kong
• Index