Fewer than one-in-five developing countries are on track to meet UN targets for sharply reducing child and maternal mortality by 2015, the World Health Organisation and the World Bank warn.The targets are part of the "Millennium Development Goals" set by the United Nations in 2000, which call for the death rate for under-fives to be cut by two-thirds and for a 75 per cent drop in maternal deaths.
But according to the World Bank, progress on cutting child mortality has been so slow that no sub-Saharan country will reach the goal.
For developing countries as a whole, the success rate is likely to be only 16 per cent.
One in 11 children in low-income countries dies before reaching five, most from preventable diseases and health problems, compared with one in 143 in rich states. Some 500,000 women die from complications in pregnancy and childbirth.
"When these kinds of targets are set it seems too soon to take urgent action and then, after a few short years, it seems too late," said WHO Director-general Dr Lee Jong-wook.
The World Bank and the UN health agency are pre-empting a two-day meeting of government and development agency officials on how to remedy the situation.
"It is going to be a question of money, political commitment and human resources, they are all intertwined," said WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl.
The slow progress on health, which accounts for half the eight targets the UN set for development in the world's poorest states, is particularly distressing because many of the means for improving the situation - drugs and health techniques - are both available and affordable.
Ed: Updated 2009: Warning the UN is seeking a 'New World Order' in 2009, i.e. a one-world government? - And the World Health Organisation is trying to deliver a vaccine that some say will aid in 'depopulation of planet earth,' a contaminated vaccine? - And the World Bank is seeking to be a 'one world bank' after bankrupting many developing countries around the world?
Clearly there has always been enough money and resources to feed the world but it has never happened, why? Why is money spent on illegal and degrading wars and by sending people to the stars, when kids can't get fed?
Because someone who has those resources, like the 300 club of the wealthiest people in he world doesn't want it to happen. With 6 Billion or so people and endless resources being used up those wealthiest people have instead decided to depopulate the world and all along under the guise of pretending to help out.
By Value Children Now 9 January 04
