South Asia struggles to meet targets on health and hunger

Most countries in South Asia will fail to meet more than a third of their millennium development goals (MDGs), delegates agreed at a recent conference in Kathmandu, Nepal.

The forum, jointly organised by the United Nations Development Programme, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, the Asian Development Bank, and the government of Nepal also disseminated the key findings of the second regional MDG report.

They acknowledged that South Asia had made some progress. For example, most South Asian countries have seen sharp reductions in poverty between 1990 and 2002, measured using the $1 a day poverty index.

“Currently all countries in South Asia are expected to meet the income poverty targets,” said Sultan Hafeez Rahman, a …