The World Bank and the IMF on Friday said that the East Asia and Pacific Region (EAP) has become one of the main drivers of global poverty reduction.

"With spectacular growth in the past decade, EAP is set to reduce the number of people in extreme poverty to 2.4 percent by 2015," far surpassing the 15 percent target of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), said The 2007 Global Monitoring Report released by the World Bank and the IMF.

The absolute number of people in extreme poverty in East Asia has declined from 226.8 million in 2002 to 169.1 million in 2004, said the report, adding EAP has almost achieved the 2005 target of eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education.

Strong progress has been made toward reducing child mortality in several countries. Timor-Leste and Lao PDR are the only fragile states in the world that are on track to reach the child mortality reduction goal.

Timor-Leste reduced the under-five mortality rates from 177 per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 107 in 2000 and 61 in 2005, an annual decline of 7.1 percent, said the report.

Vietnam reduced the rate from 53 per 1,000 live births to 19 in the same period, an annual decline of 6.8 percent. Mongolia and Lao PDR also made strong progress, with annual declines of 5.3 percent and 4.8 percent, respectively, from 1990 to 2005.

The report also hailed the progress in maternal health, noting Indonesia has made impressive progress in caring for women during childbirth, increasing the share of births assisted by medically trained attendants from 49.1 percent in 1997 to 66.2 percent in 2002/2003, an annual expansion of over 17 percent.

Vietnam recorded strong progress, moving from 77 percent of births attended by trained attendants in 1997 to over 90 percent in 2004.

The report also warned that the regional average may have disguised wide variation between countries, with more than half the countries being off-track to reduce child mortality.

Source: Xinhua