michaela: hello, and welcome to "global 3000." the world is supposed to have become a better place by this year. 2015 marks the deadline to reach eight u.n. millennium goals. the results are mixed. more children go to school than ever before, the number of people going hungry has been halved, but that still leaves some 800 million people struggling to get by. this month, world leaders meet in new york to define what ought to come next. reporter: 17 new sustainable development goals for 2030 should make the world a better place.

end poverty end hunger ensure health quality education gender equality clean water clean energy decent jobs and economic growth innovation and infrastructure reduced inequalities sustainable cities and communities responsible consumption combat climate change life in the oceans life on land peace and justice and global partnerships michaela: tackling diseases remains a global challenge. malaria, hiv, and tuberculosis are still major killers. the u.n. says 37 million cases of tuberculosis were treated or prevented through proper care, and yet, we are far from beating this disease. that's mainly because it is so closely linked to poverty. we meet those who should be at the center of the old and the

neew development goals. mumbai's slums are full of people too poor to keep themselves healthy, too poor to seek treatment, and yet, many of them have never even heard of anything like development goals. mumbai. india's biggest city features a mix of slums and luxury skyscrapers, often in close proximity. space is at a premium in the metropolis. every day, huge numbers of people commute into the city, and as many 50% of the inhabitants may carry the tuberculosis bacterium. tb thrives in overcrowded cities with high rates of poverty. kishor karwa has come down with the disease. not everyone who carries the germ contracts the illness. much depends on the conditions in which people live. >> of course, the poverty

matters. the poverty, malnutrition, diarrhea. and it's an airborne disease. and so when anybody who is having tuberculosis, our trains, our transport system in india, everywhere, everything is crowded over here. and that is why the spread is faster. reporter: 18 million people are on the go in mumbai every day. so it's easy for the germ to spread. residents of the city realize they're at risk, but there's nothing they can do about it. >> how should we know if a person is sick? we are in close contact and we interact with other commuters. their germs can infect us, and we have no chance whatsoever to protect ourselves. reporter: mumbai's climate and poor sanitation encourage the spread of the disease. there are more than 30,000 new cases of tuberculosis in the city every year.

kishor karwa has been an invalid since coming down with the disease. he and his family live in a cramped slum. india may be booming economically, but the illness has driven the karwas further into poverty. it's threatening to tear the family apart. >> in the nair hospital, we had a horrible experience. four times they collected blood, month after month. still, the cold shivers and fever could not be treated, they just gave us pills. but the symptoms remained, no treatment worked. then we came to the dahisar clinic. thereafter, the chills and fever were under control. reporter residents of mumbai get free antibiotics to treat the disease, but the treatment is time-consuming and requires six months of medical supervision.

that's an eternity when money is tight. >> i have to go the municipal hospital daily to get medicine. it's almost 2 kilometers to walk there. if i have to go to the toilet on the way, this is a big problem: where do i go? a girl in my neighborhood sent me to another clinic in saibaba nagar. they said they will give me medicine but only for one day. reporter many tuberculosis sufferers break off the treatments. that, say doctors in mumbai, has resulted in increasing cases of tuberculosis that are resistant to antibiotics. it's a vicious circle. >> when they are not taking the treatment properly, when they are not adherent to the treatment, it changes into a

mdr. then the cure rate drops. the cure rate in a usual patient is very high. more than 95%. but the mdr cure rate drops. it goes down to 70% or 80%. so it should be -- reporter: kishar karwas is continuing to get treated. nonetheless, mumbai, the city that embodies the hopes of so many indians, has become a trap for some unfortunate people. the battle against tuberculosis is a battle against poverty, and it will be won or lost in the mega-cities of the 21st century. michaela: at the other end of the world, despite obamacare, some 33 million people in the united states are still without health insurance. those who get sick without cover are also at greater risk of becoming homeless. for most, this is the beginning of a downward spiral with no way out. that's when they become dependent on charity, that great american virtue of giving back

to society. the free time of dentists is in particularly high demand. in virginia, we meet those who are left behind in one of the richest countries in the world. reporter: the parking lot of the small local airport in lee county, virginia. hundreds of people have spent the night here, hoping to get medical treatment. at 6:00 am sharp, stan brock, founder of the remote area medical charity ram, gives the green light. >> if you're here to see the dentist, please raise your hand. number one. number two. number three reporter: among those seeking assistance are velvet herron and her brother lum abner deary. >> i can't afford to go to the dentist.

it would cost me about $130 just to have one pulled. >> even just to see a specialist is nearly $200, and i mean coming up with $200 right there on the spot, especially around here, at the end of the month, you are just scraping pennies just to get by. reporter: treatment here is free. the patients register, providing their names, addresses, and medical histories. most of them, including velvet, want to see a dentist. if she and her brother don't get treated, they'll lose their front teeth. velvet is 46 and unemployed. her husband is an invalid. like many other people in this rural area, she depends on volunteer doctors. they have come from all over the u.s. at their own expense to work through the weekend. velvet has to have two teeth pulled. but this dentist was able to

save lum abner's incisors. >> sometimes the financial constraints keep patients from seeking care, so that's where clinics like this really help. reporter that's why brock regularly organizes mobile clinics like this one. they are mostly financed by small charitable donations. 80-year-old brock is an author and an adventurer who used to work on a farm in a remote part of latin america where there were no doctors. >> so i formed remote area medical, otherwise known as ram, actually to provide healthcare down there in the amazon and other third-world countries. when i came to this country, i found that, hey, people all over the place that don't have access to healthcare. reporter: lum abner and velvet have been treated by the dentists. >> i'm glad it's over, but i wouldn't change it for anything

-- nothing in the world, you know? i would go through it again if i had to. reporter: brock founded ram in 1985. medical care for poverty-stricken americans has hardly improved in the past 30 years. x the affordable care act, otherwise known commonly as obamacare, was at least a good step in the right direction. unfortunately, when it was designed, it didn't take into account the fact that adults cannot get an cannot afford dental care in this country by the tens of millions of people, and the same thing is vision care and eyeglasses. reporter velvet and lum abner can't afford new glasses either. lum abner is taking a vision test. the brother and sister and than -- more than 100 other people will be getting new glasses today.

>> i felt self-conscious because of my teeth and just meeting new glasses. i couldn't see for nothing. i mean it gives me myself. , it gives me back to me. that's what i like about it. reporter: brother and sister return home feeling better, and meanwhile, stan brock is on his way to his next charitable appointment. michaela: and now we talk to , some teenagers around the world who are still discovering their own identity. all of them are 15, just as adolescent as our fairly new millennium. sanjana jain in delhi gives us her own personal outlook on what she expects from this world in the future. ♪ >> i am 15. i am millennium. ♪

my name is sanjana jain. i like to live in delhi but i would also prefer to live in a place that is more peaceful. friendship is a very important part of my life. my mother is also my friend. and friendship is like anything. if you take care of a person, that is friendship for me. i actually love going to school but sometimes, this gives a lot of headache, because it's ninth

standard, so we have a lot projects coming up everyday, a lot of notebooks to complete, -- pollution is the major problem, i would say. we can minimize our needs that we do not need. we can carpool. we can throw the rubbish in the dustbin instead of on the roads. i like to be a photographer. i like to travel the world and see more, explore more. then i can capture that, because i can see that for myself. every picture would hold meeting for me.

michaela: now, around the world conflicts remain the main threat , to achieving development goals, often thrashing hopes of a better future. colombia is currently experiencing a rare window of opportunity, where a way out of more than 50 years of civil war seems possible. so far, it has claimed more than 200,000 lives. talks between the government and farc rebels have been going on for almost three years now. but both sides are not there yet, and authorities near the country's largest nature reserve are struggling to stand up for conservation efforts, which are being hampered by the rebel-backed mafia.

reporter: these men are loading pieces of rain forest aboard a ship, 50 tons of the finest tropical wood. farc rebels are among those that profit from the illegal timber trade. they hide from authorities in the forests of the amazon. they have no need to worry about being arrested in this small river port in southern colombia. rangers from the national parks administration have no authority here, even though they know that the timber mafia is on the verge of threatening the chiribiquete national park. >> five years ago, the wood poachers kept 30 kilometers away from the park. now trees are being cut down only 10 kilometers away. and things are getting dramatically worse, as you can see. the felling of trees, the illegal planting of coca, and extensive farming all represent a threat to the park. reporter farming in the region of caqueta is increasingly

eating away at the remaining stretches of forest. part of the problem is that local farmers use their land inefficiently. today there is mainly grass , where there once was a tropical rain forest with biological diversity. ranchers are the ones most responsible for turning forests into pastures. the german society for international cooperation, giz, is supporting nine pilot fincas or farms to protect the national park. >> no one cares about deforestation here. the people don't think ecologically. they don't appreciate the value of the forest. for them it's just trees that get in the way of livestock. but we can show them that by investing, they can get more out of their fincas in the long term. and they save the hassle of cutting down more trees or moving the finca to a new

location. if we do that, then i think it will be attractive for the farmers to do things our way. reporter little changes can make a big difference. for example, paths for livestock. on the pilot farms, the herd moves from pasture to pasture along 60-centimeter wide paths. that way the cows don't trample and destroy valuable feed grass. the pilot farms are intended to demonstrate that ecological practices like pasture rotation and the use of natural fertilizer can serve as a model for the region. >> people have already visited us because they're interested. the idea is that we motivate other farmers to protect the environment by showing them how profitable it is to use the land more efficiently. we can produce more milk without cutting down stretches of forest. reporter sailing up the rio orteguaza. one of the pilot fincas can only

be reached by boat. it belongs to felipe eslava. at 32 years old, he represents a new generation of landowners. he studied business and worked for years abroad. he has a vision of transforming the family finca into an ecological farm. he officially registered 300 hectares of his land as an environmentally protected area. disused pastures where the forest has begun to grow again. when the forest returns, so do the forest animals. >> we don't lose any production capacity. in fact, we profit by creating biomass. oxygen, biological diversity and nurtrients for the soil. the land regenerates naturally. if you give nature the time, it can perform this task better than anything else.

reporter but eslava's farm urgently needs modernization. 40 to 60 cows have to by milked by hand every morning. the same is the case on most of the region's farms. part of the milk is used for cheese. the farmers in caqueta are not yet capable of properly marketing what they produce, eslava says. in the future, he would like to see his organic products featured in the gourmet restaurants of the colombian capital. >> we have to compete with big-money enterprises, such as planting coca, illegal mining , and a host of other lucrative but illegal sources of income. we don't want to start any

conflicts. the solution is a sustainable economic model that achieves high market prices. reporter for that reason, eslava isn't just counting on agriculture. he wants to open his farm to tourists, offering vacation packages that include bird-watching tours in environmentally protected areas. such oases of forest are all too rare in caqueta. they're the last refuge of local biodiversity. michaela: one sustainable development goal is to alleviate extreme poverty and hunger by 2030, once and for all. in photojournalist nick danziger 2005, was tasked with documenting whether the millennium goals actually made a difference. his conclusions are sobering. our correspondent birgit maass met up with him in london.

reporter: living out of a suitcase, photojournalist nick danziger is only in london for 24 hours. he lives in monaco, but his long-term project about the un millennium development goals has brought him to the british capital. it's work that's especially close to his heart since he's revisited the people he photographed over and over again. >> i didnt believe that snapshots in 2005 would give us the answer. so i did go back. i went back in 2010, five years later. and, indeed, at that point, i thought i need to revisit them once more when the mdg's could come to a conclusion, to see if, how, their lives had been affected by these grand policies that were instituted by the united nations. reporter danziger meets with his agent, neil. both hope that the project will result in a book. one of the countries danziger has visited most often is niger. there, in 2005, he met abbas, who had been working in a gold mine since the age of 12.

13 hours a day, 365 days a year, without any security precautions. ten years later, abbas still has to descend into the 23 meter deep pits. he never had a chance to go to school or learn to read and write. in honduras, danziger got to know franklin. when the two first met franklin , was seven years old and top of his class, and he dreamed of working in a bank. but his family had no money for the school bus so he had to drop , out. >> and five years later i end up, i find franklin, he dropped out of school, ended up joining a gang of. -- a gang. franklin today is now living under a cloud of a death threat, because the gang knows that he knows a lot about the workings of the gang and threaten to kill him. he was a sweet kid. you can see the pictures. reporter: but some of his

stories are positive. for example, jeeva from india. he's a trans-sexual. in 2005, he was shunned by society and forced to prostitute himself. but indian law has changed in the meantime, and transsexuals have been acknowledged as a "third gender." >> jeeva has actually now a self-help group, a drop-in center going. for someone who is living on the margins of society, who actually didn't exist. jeeva did not have papers. now he not only exists in terms of having a national identity card, but is now helping his community. its a fantastically positive story. reporter following people's destinies over the course of years takes an emotional toll. danziger says that his family is a huge source of support, but he still feels the misery in the lives of his subjects. >> why does a child born in one part of the world grow up constantly in pain from hunger. where a girl grows up, forced

into a marriage as a girl, as a 13-year-old, and then will become pregnant. her body isnt made as a young teenager to give birth. and i see those women, girls, sorry, those girls die. its wrong. reporter danziger says that most of the u.n. millennium development goals set in 2000 have not been attained. the u.n. refuses to exhibit his photos. there are too many negative images. >> i could have brought that into the united nations. they could have seen the realities for themselves. but according to them, "we understand the harsh realities." i really don't believe that is the case. i don't believe they have been down a 20-meter mineshaft to see what abbas, what thousands not of young men, but children, go through on a daily basis. risking their lives to put

red, meager food on the table in the evening for their families. reporter: the u.n. millennium development project expires this year. but who knows? maybe nick danziger will continue visiting his subjects every five years. michaela: and whether those new sustainable development goals , will make a difference now largely depends on how serious those who sign off on them are about actually fulfilling them by on our special website 2020. "my2030," we have captured the hopes and expectations of people from around the world. take a look and let us know what you think. the global team will be back with our millennium series and more next week, but i'd like to say good-bye. after almost eight years presenting this program, i will be joining our team of political correspondents. thanks for watching, and see you soon on dw news.

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