POVERTY: World 'off target' on poverty effort

Danny Rose, Medical Writer August 31, 2010
The world is "off target" to meet the Millennium Development Goals, says World Vision chief Tim Costello, with the global financial crisis posing a major speed bump to the international effort.
Affluent nations "looked inward" as a result of the economic instability, Mr Costello said, pumping trillions of dollars into domestic stimulus packages while some countries also wound back their foreign aid spending.
The global community had significant extra work to do, he said, to match the commitments set out in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - an ambitious 15 year plan for reducing global poverty and improving heath standards by 2015.
"The global financial crisis meant we took our eyes off the MDGs and off the ball," Mr Costello told reporters in Melbourne on Tuesday.
"We retreated, looked inwards, and we're stuck in our bubbles saying `we're only worried about our selves' ... there was certainly a drying up of funds and momentum."
The disadvantage in developing nations was also exacerbated as rising unemployment in the first world resulted in less "remittance" money flowing into the third world, as migrant workers had less extra cash to send home to their families.
Mr Costello spoke at the 63rd annual United Nations' DPI/NGO (Department of Public Information/Non-Governmental Organisation) conference, the world's largest gathering of aid and charity workers and the biggest UN summit yet held in Australia.
The event is focused on assessing global progress towards the MDGs, and Mr Costello said the world could yet meet the MDG defined targets for improved childhood education.
Clear progress was also evident in the now "flattened" rate of new HIV infections globally, he said.
"The MDGs, because they exist, we've seen some three million children's lives saved since the year 2000," Mr Costello said.
"We've (also) seen a billion people who didn't have clean water have access to clean water and, though we are off target this isn't like an exam where we say we've failed.
"This was still a very extraordinary achievement for the world to have unprecedented focus on alleviating poverty though the lens of the MDGs."
The conference has heard the MDG that has seen the least progress was one that required a major roll-out of maternal health services, to help reduce the 530,000 women who die in childbirth every year.
"One woman dies every minute from maternal birthing issues," said Liz Sime, regional director of Marie Stopes International Australia.
Fellow Australian Mark Bennett, the chief executive of Hamlin Fistula International, told the conference the maternal death rate in Ethiopia was 80 times the rate in Australia.
More than 90 per cent of Ethiopian women gave birth at home with no skilled attendant. If something went wrong, poor roads and transport - and a lack of medical professionals - made it difficult to get help.
Mr Bennett said the hospital had decided to train its own midwives to work in rural areas, with the first graduates to start work soon.
"Each pregnancy needs to be safer for each woman," he told the conference.
The conference will draft a report, to be handed to the Australian government, outlining the NGO community's view on progress towards the MDGs.
This will also inform discussion at a UN summit, in New York in late September, where world leaders will be updated on MDG progress.
World leaders will then be called on in October to replenish the $US20 billion ($A22.42 billion) fund that will underpin global MDG initiatives over the next three years.
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