“As a U.N. high-level panel completes worldwide consultations to pick development goals for 2015 and beyond, PlusNews consulted experts to see how HIV/AIDS might fit into this new agenda,” according the news service. A draft report prepared for the 27-member high-level panel “calls for HIV to be among the new goals, but also [includes] suggestions to move beyond disease-specific goals … to address health equity, non-communicable disease and weak health systems,” the news service notes. PlusNews includes statements from the International Council of AIDS Service Organizations (ICASO), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Prasada Rao, the U.N. secretary general’s special envoy for AIDS in Asia and the Pacific. “The post-2015 panel is expected to present its recommendations to the U.N. Secretary-General this June,” the article notes (3/28).

In related news, Inter Press Service writes, “[A]s the United Nations begins the process of formulating a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for its post-2015 agenda, there is a campaign to underscore the importance of water and sanitation, so that the world body will get it right the second time around.” The news service highlights recent meetings held to discuss the issues and quotes a number of officials and experts, including Ambassador Csaba Korosi of Hungary; Deputy U.N. Secretary-General Jan Eliasson; Torgny Holmgren, executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI); John Sauer, head of external relations at Water for People; and Richard Greenly, president of Water4 (Deen, 3/19).