The collective record is "mixed" in the "midpoint" report. While Asia has made dramatic progress in the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, halving the proportion of people living on the equivalent of a $ a day, there is evidence to suggest that benefits of economic growth are not being shared across different parts of the continent.
In South Asia, almost 30 per cent of the population still lives on a dollar (approximately Rs. 41) a day.
The disparities also exist within countries where populations - in rural areas, children of mothers with no formal education and the poorest households - were not making enough progress to meet the MDG targets, says the report released here last week jointly by Deirdre Boyd of the U.N. Development Programme, Salim Habayeb of the WHO and Sayeda Hameed, Member, Planning Commission.
The progress in improving child nutrition was still "unacceptably" low. "If the current trends continue, Asia will fall short of reaching the MDG target of halving the proportion of underweight children.
Sub regions
South and South-East Asia are still among the sub-regions with the highest percentage of children under five suffering from malnutrition," the report said.
South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa had the highest number of maternal deaths and the lowest proportion of skilled health attendants at birth. Asia was also lagging in meeting the goal of promoting gender equality and empowerment. A large number of women were still shut out of jobs and receive poor health care. In South Asia, the participation of women in paid, non-agricultural employment rose from 13 per cent to 18 per cent between 1990 and 2005 - still the lowest percentage of women working for wages, side from farm labour, among all regions of the world. In politics and government, the gains for women were modest while in East Asia, women's representation actually dropped one percentage point to 19 per cent.
South Asia's path to MDG may be obstructed by challenges in areas such as health, environmental sustainability and gender equality. These include deforestation, unplanned urbanisation and the fast rate of HIV/AIDS infections in parts of the region.
On the positive side, the report points to progress in the fall in the proportion of people living in extreme poverty from nearly a third to less that one-fifth between 1990 and 2004.
Progress has been made in enrolment of school children, political participation of women, decline in child mortality, likely decline in tuberculosis epidemic and expansion of key intervention to control malaria.
