Millions Saved: Proven Successes in Global Health Instructor Guide

Instructor Guide (PDF, 327K)

In the past 50 years, the developing world has benefited from tremendous improvements in health. Life expectancy has risen from 40 to 65 years.The chances that a child will survive to the age of five have doubled. In addition to directly improving people’s lives, this progress contributes to economic growth.While some of the improvement in health is the result of overall social and economic gains, about half of it is due to specific efforts to address major causes of disease and disability, such as providing better and more accessible health services, introducing new medicines and other health technologies, and fostering healthier behaviors.

A working group of experts convened by the Center for Global Development identified 20 cases meeting five criteria (see Box 3) in which large-scale efforts to improve health in developing countries have succeeded—saving millions of lives and preserving the livelihoods and social fabric of entire communities. Taken together, this work provides clear evidence that large-scale success in health is possible—countering a common view that the health problems of the developing world are intractable, and that development assistance to health yields few benefits.