Defeating poverty: a distant dream for half of Asia

Haruiko Kuroda, president of the Asian Development Bank: "Some areas in Asia are worse off than sub-Saharan Africa"

Washington (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Many Asian countries may not reach the Millennium Development Goals, that is, to halve the rate of poverty within a decade. The alarm was sounded today by the Japanese, Haruhiko Kuroda, president of the Asian Development Bank. During his first visit to Washington in his capacity as president of the Manila-based institution (Philippines), Kuroda said that "predictably, in 2015, more than half the poor of the planet will live in these countries". Right now, in Asia, there are around 700 million extremely poor people – around two-thirds of the entire planet – who subsist on less than a dollar a day. He emphasised that efforts to ensure no one gets left behind must be boosted.

Kuroda has discovered that "even as regards income per capita, it may be that the whole area, overall, will reach the stipulated level, but some countries will not manage. Even countries which should reach a satisfactory level of income may be hiding deep pockets of poverty".

The Millennium Development Goals consist in halving rates of poverty by 2015 when compared to 1990 figures; from 27.9% among residents of countries with medium-low income to 14 %. Another objective is to halve the number of starving people. Kuroda said the big challenge also lies in poverty data not expressly linked to income. In this regard, he cited as an example the fact that 71% of the world's inhabitants who do not have access to a moderately advanced health system are in Asia, as well as around 60% of those who do not have drinking water. Besides, more than half the world's malnourished people are in Asia, as are those who live in putrid suburbs and shacks, plus 43% of children who do not reach the age of five. Kuroda said that "in many zones of the continent, the problem is worse than in sub-Saharan Africa." He specified that in "southern Asia, there are more undernourished people without access to decent health services and living in slums than there are in sub-Saharan Africa." This also applies to many countries in the south-east, at least as regards hospital services, drinking water and living conditions.

Kuroda emphasized that AIDS could become a huge problem even for south and south-east Asia, a threat which carries with it economic consequences, other than the human cost. For Kuroda, before 2015, these two regions of the continent will have, in all, an approximately equal number of infections to the rate in black Africa. He added: "The message seems clear to me: if we do not reach these objectives in Asia, these curses will not be contained for anything."

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