Aid Cuts Threaten Millennium Development Goals, Warns UN

September 21, 2012

The Secretary General of the United Nations has warned that declining aid donations mean many of the UN Millennium Development Goals are likely to be missed. The UN says official development assistance in 2011 was less than half the $300 billion needed annually to meet the targets set in 2000. Researchers say up until now good progress has been made in tackling poverty and improving healthcare.

Margaret Gift has brought her son Simplicious for a check-up at a mobile health clinic in the remote village of Chikhwawa in Malawi. His diarrhea can be treated on the spot.

Health workers say Malawi has made rapid progress in cutting child mortality - one of the UN's Millennium Development Goals or MDGs - partly due to decentralizing healthcare. UNICEF's Victor Chinyama says that makes health workers more accessible.

"These are people who live within the communities and are able to provide basic treatment to children for some of the most common illnesses, such as malaria, pneumonia and diarrhea," said Chinyama.

Since 2000, there has been an estimated 40 percent fall globally in the number of children dying under the age of five - good progress towards the goal of two-thirds reduction.

Launching the 2012 MDG Gap Task Force Report, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned gains are at risk because of a $167 billion shortfall from donors.