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A new road map to achieve Millennium Development Goals

Special Correspondent

CHENNAI: ``Not all developing countries are making adequate progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals [MDGs]; and none are presently on track to meet all the goals by 2015,'' the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific has noted.

Meeting at Almaty

At the annual high-level meeting of the Commission at Almaty, Kazakhstan, a new road map for the Asia and Pacific region was adopted to help countries get on-track by providing assistance in five areas — knowledge and capacity building, expertise, resources, advocacy, and regional cooperation in delivering public goods such as trans-boundary infrastructure and energy security.

The road map was aimed at helping poor countries falling behind to achieve the MDGs by 2015.

It calls for the existing regional partnership among UNESCAP, the U.N. Development Programme and the Asian Development Bank on MDGs to be expanded to include other U.N. agencies, multilateral funding institutions, sub-regional organisations and the corporate sector.

The Almaty meeting resolved to appeal to the Asia-Pacific countries to increase investment in health.

The Commission expressed concern that ``a large number of people lack access to basic health care in the region, and that catastrophic health-care expenditures can impoverish individuals and increase the number of poor and vulnerable people in the region.''

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