The gov­ern­ment of Namibia has released a new report that tracks the coun­tries progress on meet­ing the Mil­len­nium Devel­op­ment Goals. Despite progress in some area’s mater­nal deaths have been increas­ing in the country.

From the New Era, we read more of what is included in the report.

Accord­ing to the just released sec­ond MDG Report 2008, the coun­try achieved goals of reduc­ing the num­ber of severely poor house­holds, the sur­vival rate in Grade 8, the ratio of females to men in sec­ondary edu­ca­tion, the lit­er­acy rate of women com­pared to their male coun­ter­parts, HIV/AIDS preva­lence rate amongst the 15 to 19 year age group and inci­dences of malaria.

These tar­gets fall under MDGs relat­ing to erad­i­cat­ing extreme poverty and hunger, achiev­ing uni­ver­sal pri­mary edu­ca­tion, pro­mot­ing gen­der equal­ity and empow­er­ing women, com­bat­ing HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

But Prime Min­is­ter Nahas Angula said unless the coun­try focuses on edu­ca­tion, agri­cul­ture and health, it is unlikely to make progress in other goals as well. He sin­gled out pri­mary health care, under nutri­tion,
san­i­ta­tion and mater­nal health as being crit­i­cal issues that should be addressed by the rel­e­vant ministries.

Infant mor­tal­ity deaths have dropped from 57 per 1 000 live birth in 1993 to 49 per 1 000 live births cur­rently, but with the tar­get put at 38 deaths per 1 000 live births by 2012, the coun­try is unlikely to achieve the goal.

The coun­try is also unlikely to meet the under five mor­tal­ity rate tar­get of 45 deaths per 1 000 live births. Cur­rently 69 deaths per 1 000 live births are reported.

Infant mor­tal­ity and under five mor­tal­ity, which are under the reduce child mor­tal­ity goal have increased because of the HIV/AIDS and under nutri­tion, while mater­nal deaths have almost dou­bled from 225 deaths per 100 000 live births in 1993 449 deaths per 100 000 live births to date. The tar­get for 2012 is 337 deaths per 100 000 live births.

Like

Unlike