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UN predicts that millennium development goals will be missed by a wide margin in Africa

BMJ 2005; 330 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.330.7504.1350-b (Published 09 June 2005) Cite this as: BMJ 2005;330:1350
  1. Owen Dyer
  1. London

The United Nations Human Development Report Office this week released preliminary figures from the 2005 human development report projecting that the UN's millennium development goals will be missed by a wide margin in Africa. The UN undertook in 2000 to halve the number of people living on less than a dollar a day, to cut infant mortality by two thirds, and to give every child primary education by 2015.

But according to the latest figures, the UN is now predicting five million deaths in children younger than 5 in the year 2015, worse than current rates, and three million more than the millennium development goal. Between now and 2015, the UN predicted 29 million children under five will die as a result of the failure to reach the target. Ten African countries have worse infant mortality rates now than in 2000, and another 29 countries are on course to meet the infant mortality development goal more than 35 years late.

Current trends will mean that Africa will still have more than 40 million unschooled children in 2015, and the number of …

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