Goal #1End Hunger & Extreme Poverty
Introduction
Over the years, we've been inundated with the statistics and the pictures of poverty around the world-so much so that many people in both the North and South have come to accept it as an unfortunate but unalterable state of affairs. The truth, however, is that things have changed in recent years. The world today is more prosperous than it ever has been. The technological advances we have seen in recent years have created encouraging new opportunities to improve economies and reduce hunger.
The targets
Goal 1 of the Millennium Development Goals sets out by the year 2015:
1. Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day.
2. Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.
Did you know?
Did you know that in our world today:
- One third of deaths – some 18 million people a year or 50,000 per day – are due to poverty-related causes. That’s 270 million people since 1990, the majority women and children, roughly equal to the population of the US. (Reality of Aid 2004)
- Every year more than 10 million children die of hunger and preventable diseases – that’s over 30,000 per day and one every 3 seconds. (80 Million Lives, 2003 / Bread for the World / UNICEF / World Health Organization)
Achieving the Goals
Doctors at a local health clinic in Brazil learned the reason their patients who regularly came in with health problems related to poverty stopped coming was due to a national anti-hunger program that gave children three meals a day.
“It was simply that these children were starting to eat better,” says Nélia Maria Cruz, the clinic’s chief.
The children were among thousands who have benefited from Fome Zero (“Zero Hunger”), a national effort to eliminate hunger in Brazil.
The program’s formula is simple: Give each Brazilian the opportunity to have at least three meals a day. It might not seem like such a bold challenge but approximately one quarter of Brazil’s 170 million people currently live below the poverty line.
To meet the immediate needs of everyone who goes hungry in the country, the government needs to provide emergency help to 11 million families, according to official estimates. At the same time, the effort must include long-term actions to enable the population to manage on its own, so that in the future every family is able to buy its own food.
by Rogerio Waldrigues Galindo from Perspectives in Health
Goal News
Food crisis task force meets
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today convened the inaugural meeting of a high-level task force of senior United Nations officials aimed at addressing the food crisis, noting that there was an urgent need to help the millions of people already suffering. The crisis threatens gains made in achieving Millennium Development Goal 1, which focuses on hunger and extreme poverty.
The dramatic surge in food prices has plunged millions of poor people and many net food importing poor countries into a food crisis. Consequently, it has also put at risk their chances of achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. Whilst the focus has been on the impact on the MDG1 of reducing poverty and hunger, given the close inter-connectedness between all the 8 MDGs, the impact on these sections of the poor on health, education and livelihoods more broadly, cannot be underestimated.
Although many countries remain off track in meeting the ambitious Millennium Development Goals that seek to slash hunger poverty and a host of other social ills by 2015, quick and significant progress is obviously possible, according to Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro.
Representatives drawn from more than thirty countries debated various instruments for attaining good coordination in Africa and proceeded to nominate regional representatives who will serve on Africa’s governing council, a new organ that replaces the old facilitation team. Some of the recommendations made directly touched on what should be done in order for this structure to effectively work with a secretariat that they identified as severely limited in its human-power base at the moment.
According to the draft Health Service Development Plan (HSDP) joint UNDP and Ministry of Heath report of 2005, the per capita health service expenditure of Ethiopia is rated at 5.9 US dollars, the least among a list of other developing countries such as Kenya (31 USD), Uganda(18 USD), and Tanzania(8 USD). The report also indicated that in order to meet MDGs Ethiopia needs to increase the health service expenditure to 34 USD.
