A Review of Sustainable Development Goal 3 Indicators in European Countries Before the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

In recent years, achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been one of the most important issues for countries throughout the world. In the SDG framework, Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG3) is devoted to “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.” However, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which has been experienced since the beginning of 2020, has deeply affected countries in all respects. Accordingly, the health systems of countries have come to the point of collapsing. This situation has been bringing about setback to meet the targets of SDG3. The purpose of this study is to determine the status of SDG3 indicators in European countries before the COVID-19 pandemic. For this purpose, firstly, countries are clustered based on their health indicators given in the Europe Sustainable Development Report 2020 using cluster analysis. Having classified similar countries, each cluster has been examined by considering the effects of COVID-19 pandemic.