My contribution to the paper was to provide the estimates of deaths by cause, age and sex for all countries of the world, as well as projections of cause-specific deaths to 2030. Moderate acceleration of the trends seen from 2000—2010 could be feasible, and good evidence of how the reduction in non-communicable disease (NCD) mortality might be achieved was identified in an earlier paper I was involved in (Kontis et al. — see post of 3 May 2014).

The UN will formulate ambitious Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, including one for health. Feasible goals with some quantifiable, measurable targets can influence governments. This paper proposes a quantitative health target, “Avoid in each country 40% of premature deaths (under-70 deaths that would be seen in the 2030 population at 2010 death rates), and improve health care at all ages”. This could be achieved in 2030 if the following subtargets were met: avoid two-thirds of child and maternal deaths; two-thirds of tuberculosis, HIV, and malaria deaths; a third of premature deaths from NCDs; and a third of those from other causes (other communicable diseases, undernutrition, and injuries). These challenging subtargets would halve under-50 deaths, avoid a third of the (mainly NCD) deaths at ages 50—69 years, and so avoid 40% of under-70 deaths.