Integrate Technology Solutions Into Future Development Goals, Sachs Says
“Access to, and the use of, technology should not be a standalone goal in any future development agenda because it will be the tool by which the targets will be achieved, according to Jeffrey Sachs,” director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, who spoke “at a roundtable event at the Social Good Summit in New York on Sunday,” The Guardian reports. “As part of his work with the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network, which mobilizes scientific and technical expertise to find solutions to global challenges, Sachs is leading a campaign to get one million community health workers mobilized in Africa by 2015, to help meet the health-related [Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)],” and he “wants all of them to have access to a mobile phone,” the newspaper writes. “His comments coincide with the publication on Saturday of a U.N. report that says although nearly 40 percent of people worldwide will be online by the end of the year, more than two-thirds of people in developing countries will remain unconnected,” The Guardian notes. “It’s no different from 13 years ago to get people (access) to antiretrovirals. In 2000 there wasn’t one (antiretroviral therapy) official development program. These things can be done, but they require a lot of organization and industry support,” Sachs said, according to the newspaper (Ford, 9/23).