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Poverty reduced in Asia-Pacific; hunger level high: Report

The Asia-Pacific region has taken big strides in reducing poverty and is moving fast towards achieving other development goals, but still has high levels of hunger as well as child and maternal mortality, says a new report published by the UN.

New Delhi: The Asia-Pacific region has taken big strides in reducing poverty and is moving fast towards achieving other development goals, but still has high levels of hunger as well as child and maternal mortality, says a new report published by the UN.

The Asia-Pacific region has already reached the Millenium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the incidence of poverty, reducing the proportion of people living on less that USD 1.25 per day from 50 to 22 percent between 1990 and 2009, it said.

Published by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), the Asian Development Bank and the United Nations Development Programme, the assessment report was released here today by Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh.

The region has also achieved some other MDG indicators ahead of the target year of 2015.

These include promoting gender equality in education, reducing HIV prevalence, stopping the spread of tuberculosis, increasing forest cover, reducing consumption of ozone-depleting substances and halving the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water.

However, while strong economic dynamism has driven regional success in poverty reduction, even fast growing countries continue to lose shocking numbers of children before their fifth birthday and thousands of mothers die unnecessarily while giving birth, the report said.

Over three million children died before their fifth birthday in 2010 alone, it said.

"We are in race against time, with just three years left to achieve the MDGs. The good news though, is that our analysis shows many of these goals can still be reached with redoubling of effort in the time remaining until 2015," said ESCAP Executive Secretary and UN Under Secretary-General Noeleen Heyzer via video message at the report launch.



PTI