India and China hold the key to world meeting MDGs: UNICEF

Global achievement of the health related Millennium Development Goals - the MDGs - depends largely on India's success and on China accelerating progress even further, according to a new United Nation Children's Fund (UNICEF) report which examines the latest trends in child and maternal health.

In this year's State of Asia-Pacific's Children 2008, UNICEF says it is a fundamental truth that unless India achieves major improvements in health, nutrition, water and sanitation, education, gender equality and child protection, global efforts to reach the MDGs will fail.

The report stresses that China too needs to make significant strides to regain early progress it made in child survival, citing that in 2006 2.5 million child deaths occurred in these two countries accounting for nearly a third of all child deaths -- India (2.1m) and China (415 000).

However, UNICEF acknowledged that the region's robust economic growth, the fastest in the world since 1990, has lifted millions out of poverty, thus considerably improving child survival, regarded by it as a key test of a nation's progress in human development and child rights."But gains have been overshadowed by deepening disparities, which means health care often fails to reach the poorest. This is a region with half of the world's children, spanning 37 countries and two hemispheres," the report said.

The report underscores a disturbing trend across the region: public health expenditure remains well below the world average on 5.1 per cent, with South Asia spending only 1.1 per cent of GDP and 1.9 per cent being spent in the rest of Asia-Pacific. In addition, as more services within countries are privatized and the government share of health budgets diminishes, public facilities become more run down and health workers leave for better paid jobs in the private sector or outside the country.

"The divide between rich and poor is rising at a troubling rate within sub regions of Asia-Pacific, leaving vast numbers of mothers and children at risk of increasing relative poverty and continued exclusion from quality primary health-care services," the report said, adding that Pneumonia, diarrhea and malnutrition continue to be major causes of child death in the region.

The reports further notes that unless discrimination against women and girls is addressed as part of overall strategies to improve child and maternal health, high rates of maternal and child mortality will remain stubbornly entrenched report. nepalnews.com Aug 05 08