Senior Special Assistant to the President on Millennium Development Goals, Dr. Precious Gbenol, on Tuesday said the Federal Government had succeeded in reducing the number of people that were suffering from extreme hunger by 50 per cent.
She did not however disclose the population.
Gbenol spoke with State House correspondents after the quarterly presidential committee meeting on the assessment and monitoring of the MDGs chaired by President Goodluck Jonathan.
Gbenol said the achievement was in fulfillment of Goal One of the MDGs.
She said the Federal Government achieved the feat well ahead of the 2015 deadline for the goals to be met.
She said, “The country as a nation has made tremendous efforts and has been able to achieve MDGs Goal One. We have been able to reduce the number of people by half that suffers from extreme hunger way ahead of 2015.
“On gender equality in schools, we have also been able to achieve Goal Three. We have also been able to achieve Goal Six, which is the HIV prevalence of the country.
“It has been halted, reversed and is on the downward side. Currently, the national prevalence of HIV for the country is 3.4. It rose to 5.8, it came down to 4.8, 4.4, 4.1 and the current national prevalence of HIV for the country is 3.4 per cent.
“We were able to tell the President too that the country is working very hard on achieving Goals Five, which is reducing maternal mortality.
“Between now and 2015 at the next statistics that goal, I am very positive, will be achieved. And we were able to tell the President that.”
Gbenol said the President had directed her office to henceforth work closely with the 36 state governors to ensure that their various indices and targets were met on or before May 2015.
She said Jonathan, who expressed satisfaction at what the country had achieved so far, insisted on the May 2015 deadline given to the MDGs to meet the target.
Gbenol added, “He (the President) also said that we need to disaggregate data more, work closely with the state governors on various issues like education; work with the state governors wherein the number of out of school children is higher; and work with the state governors on where HIV prevalence may still be high; work with state governors wherein the poverty indexes are still high.”
via nigerianeye
Post a Comment