The UK on the MDGs

The Department for International Development (DfID) of the government of the United Kingdom has issued a comment on the progress toward meeting the Millennium Development Goals as the world has reached the half way point between in the 2000-2015 period agreed to by the UN to reduce poverty.

I quote the DfID summary of what more needs to be done::

* 75 million children are still not in school.
* Half of the developing world lack basic sanitation.
* Over half a million women still die each year from treatable and preventable complications of pregnancy and childbirth.
* Over 33 million people are living with HIV.
* More than one million people die of Malaria every year, including one child every 30 seconds.
* 980 million people still live on less than $1 a day.

Comment: The World Bank has recently recognized that the $2 per day poverty line is too low, adjusted it to a still lowly $1.25 per day, and reestimated the number of people living in such extreme poverty at 1.4 billion, that is 1,400,000,000. It is interesting to compare the effort to help these people with the $700 billion now proposed to prevent a recession in the United States. JAD