World Bank Pledges New Agriculture, Education, and Health Spending to Help Poor Countries Achieve Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

WASHINGTON, September 13, 2010As world leaders gather at UN headquarters next week to review MDGs progress to date, the World Bank Group has announced that it will mobilize significant new funding for health, education, and agriculture to help countries achieve their MDGs by 2015. According to Unfinished Business: Mobilizing New Efforts to Achieve the 2015 Millennium Development Goals-a new Bank report prepared for the MDGs review summit-developing countries were making significant progress in overcoming poverty until the recent food, fuel, and financial crises. In 1981, 52 percent of people in developing countries lived in extreme poverty; by 2005, that share had fallen to 25 percent, with poverty falling sharply in East Asia, Latin America, and Eastern and Central Europe. But this progress has not been shared by all. Sub-Saharan Africa continues to lag in overcoming poverty. Hunger and malnutrition rates have been falling, but progress on meeting the MDG of halving the proportion of people who suffer from hunger was almost completely reversed in 2008 with the spike in food prices. The World Bank now estimates that as a result of the food, fuel and financial crises, 64 million more people are living in extreme poverty in 2010, and some 40 million more people went hungry last year. By 2015, 1.2 million more children under five may die, and about 100 million more people may remain without access to safe water.