Since the launch of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at the Millennium Summit in New York in September 2000, the MDGs have become the most widely-accepted yardstick of development efforts by governments, donors and NGOs. The MDGs are a set of numerical and time-bound targets related to key achievements in human development. They include halving income-poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education and gender equality, reducing infant and child mortality by two-thirds and maternal mortality by three quarters, reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases, and halving the proportion of people without access to safe water. These targets are to be achieved by 2015, from their levels in 1990.