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New UN Report Says Poverty And Hunger Reduced In Caribbean

GENEVA, Switzerland, CMC – Latin America and Caribbean region has met a number of targets for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), including halving the extreme poverty rate, according to a United Nations report released here, on Monday.

The report noted that the proportion of people in the region living on less than US$1.25 a day fell from 12 percent in 1990 to six percent in 2010.

The Millennium Development Goals Report 2013, launched by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in Geneva, also finds that the region is on track to meet the target of halving the proportion of the population suffering from hunger by 2015.

It notes that the proportion of undernourished people in the total population has decreased from 15 percent in 1990-1992 to eight percent in 2010-2012.

The eight MDGs, with a number of sub-targets covering a range of poverty, hunger, health, gender equality, education and environmental indicators, were agreed by all countries as an outgrowth of the UN Millennium Summit in 2000, most with a due date of 2015.

According to the report, gains have been made in reaching other MDG targets.

Access to primary education has been expanded in Latin America and the Caribbean, with the adjusted net enrolment rate for children growing from 88 per cent in 1990 to 95 per cent in 2011. Over the same period, the number of children of primary school age who are out of school declined by more than half,  from seven to three to 3 million.

The region has achieved parity in primary education between boys and girls.

Latin America and the Caribbean are also very close to reaching the target of halving the proportion of people without basic sanitation. The proportion of the population using an improved sanitation facility, such as a latrine or toilet, increased from 68 to 82 per cent between 1990 and 2011.

The UN report found that the region is on also track to achieve the MDG target of halting the spread and reversing the incidence of tuberculosis, with the number of new tuberculosis cases falling by more than 50 percent between 1990 and 2011.

Latin America and the Caribbean reached the MDG drinking water target five years ahead of the target date of 2015.

The proportion of the population using an improved water source increased from 85 percent to 94 percent between 1990 and 2011 and the region is also close to reaching the target of reducing the child mortality rate, with the rate of deaths of children under five years old falling by 64 percent between 1990 and 2011.

But the report noted that despite the improvement, disparities in progress persist between the two sub-regions.

From 2010 to 2012, the prevalence of undernourished people in Latin America was eight percent, while in the Caribbean it was 18 percent.

Maternal mortality in the Caribbean remains high, with 190 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2010, and accelerated action is urgently needed to meet the MDG target of reducing the ratio by three-quarters.

The report found that Latin America has a much lower maternal mortality ratio, with 72 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2010.

But on a positive note, the Caribbean is the region that has seen the sharpest decline in the number of people newly infected with HIV, which dropped by 43 percent between 2001 and 2011, with an estimated 13,000 new infections in 2011.

However, after sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean is the region most heavily affected, with one percent of adults living with HIV in 2011.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the target of universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS – commonly understood as the provision of antiretroviral therapy to at least 80 percent of those who need it – is within reach.

In 2011, 68 percent of people living with HIV in Latin America and the Caribbean received the treatment, the highest among all developing regions.

The report notes that the forests are disappearing at a rapid pace in the region, despite the establishment of forest policies and laws supporting sustainable forest management in many countries. The largest net loss of forests has occurred in South America – around 3.6 million hectares per year from 2005 to 2010.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, levels of adolescent childbearing – risky for both mothers and their newborns – remain high, and have only recently begun to decline. In Latin America, the adolescent birth rate declined from 92 births per 1,000 girls in 1990 to 88 in 2000, and to 80 in 2010, while the Caribbean saw a decline from 80 births per 1,000 girls in 1990 to 78 in 2000, and to 68 in 2010.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that adolescent girls, in general, face greater barriers than adult women in accessing reproductive health services.

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