SWITZERLAND: Most poor countries will miss global targets to reduce child mortality, improve maternal health and reverse the toll of Aids and other diseases by 2015, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned.
None of the poorest regions of the developing world is on track to meet the target of reducing by two-thirds the rate of child mortality, now about 11 million deaths each year, in the next decade, according to the United Nations agency.
HIV/Aids, which kills three million people worldwide a year, is growing gradually in major parts of Asia, according to the WHO report Health and the Millennium Development Goals.
Health is at the heart of the UN Millennium Declaration, adopted by 189 heads of state in September 2000, which set out a road map of eight goals to be reached by 2015. Using 1990 data as baselines, they aim to reduce poverty and hunger, tackle gaps in health services, education and boost access to clean water.
"The evidence so far suggests that while there has been some progress, too many countries - particularly the poorest - are falling behind in health," WHO director-general Lee Jong-wook said in a statement.
"This is likely to affect other areas, including education, gender equality and poverty reduction."
Millennium issues will be high on the agenda at the September summit meeting for heads of state in New York.
On the positive side, more poor women delivering babies now have a skilled medical person helping them. The use of insecticide-treated bed nets against mosquito-borne malaria, which kills at least one million people a year, has also risen.
However more than 500,000 women still die each year in pregnancy and childbirth, and maternal death rates are 1,000 times higher in sub-Saharan Africa than in high-income countries, according to the report.
The goal is to reduce the maternal mortality rate by three-quarters by 2015 compared to 1990. Another 200 million women lack safe and effective contraceptive services, the report said.
In 14 African countries, levels of under-five mortality are higher than in 1990, according to the report.
"If worldwide trends continue through 2015, the reduction in mortality among children under-five will be about one quarter, far from the target of a two-thirds reduction," it added.