Monitoring the Millennium Development Goals

targets to be reached by 2015 (Box 1).1 Unusually, this issue of the IJE carries two editorials. Both discuss the monitoring of MDG4 (reduction in under-5 mortality). Mikkel Oestergaard and colleagues discuss problems with tracking the progress towards MDG4 using the an-nual rate of change in the under-5 mortality rate: the indicator of choice identified by the United Nations Inter-Agency Group on Child Mortality Estimation. They point out that a lack of real-time data in some countries means that, using this metric, it will be im-possible to determine whether national targets for MDG4 have been met until well after 2015.2 Taking a slightly different view, Corsi and Subramanian argue that progress can be better monitored by maintaining a focus on the absolute level of the under-5 mortalit