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Sout h Africa is well on course to meet all Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and targets ahead of the 2015 deadline.

This according to the MDG country report released on the weekend by Government's Social Sector Cluster.

The MDGs are eight goals comprising 18 targets that were adopted by the United Nations in 2000 as part of the Millennium Declaration.

These are to eradicate extreme poverty; to achieve universal primary education; to promote gender equality and empower women; to reduce child mortality; to improve maternal health; to combat HIV and AIDS, malaria and other diseases; to ensure environmental sustainability as well as to develop a global partnership for development.

Following a MDG consultative meeting, chairperson of the Social Sector Cluster Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said the key challenge that the UN was attempting to confront was poverty.

According to the South Africa MDG country report, the current assessment of the country's performance suggests some of the MDGs have already been met.

This is attributed to the fact that when the new democratic government came into being it set itself many targets similar to those articulated in the 1990 Millennium Declaration.

Giving an overview of the report, director general in the Department of Health Thami Mseleku said South Africa was poised to achieve the goals.

He said measures to eradicate extreme poverty included the social assistance grants, which increased from R10-billion in 1994 to R37,1-billion in 2004 with beneficiaries growing from 2,6-million to 7,9-million during the same period.

Other interventions that were successful included the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP), the Agricultural Starter Pack Programme and the Comprehensive Agricultural Support Programme (CASP).

According to the report, using expenditure-related indices, particularly the Living Standards Measurements of the SA Advertising Research Foundation, it emerges that the proportion of poorest South Africans has been decreasing.

Mseleku said government's expenditure on HIV and AIDS had increased over the years from about R30 million in 1994 to R342 in 2001/02 and was set to rise to R3.6 billion in 2005/06.

He said by the end of April 2004, 50 000 patients were receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) at 143 health facilities in all 53 health districts.

"Besides treating patients who are HIV positive and those who have AIDS, the programme focuses on prevention, promotion, care, support and issues of human rights," explained Mseleku.

Also the proportion of households with access to clean water increased from 60 percent in 1995 to 85% in 2003 and by December 2004 10-million people had access to clean water.

Access to sanitation increased from 49 percent of households in 1994 to 63 percent in 2003 while 2.4 million housing subsidies were approved and 1,74-million housing units were built between April 1994 and March 2005.

With regard to achieving universal primary education for both girls and boys, there has been a steady, non-linear increase in the enrolment between 1999 and 2002 with enrolment increasing from approximately 150 000 to 280 000.

However, the challenge, said Mseleku, was to ensure that the achievement of these goals took place also in other African countries.

He emphasised the importance of global partnerships for development that would among others ensure open, predictable and non-discriminatory trading and financial systems including commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction.

These partnerships will also address special needs of least developed countries, deal comprehensively with debt problems in developing countries, develop, and implement, in cooperation with developing countries, strategies for decent and productive work for youth.

Issues of good governance are being pushed in other countries, he said, highlighting that if the development goals around aid were not vigourously addressed, it would make a mockery of the goals that have been achieved already.

Nevertheless, coming out strongly from the discussions on the report was lack of baseline data and the recording of quality data.

"While we have made great strides in improving the quality of data since 1994, we are unfortunately a long way from delivering good quality data even today," said Tshabalala-Msimang.

She added that the second problem with reporting data as required by the UN, was that national averages hid provincial and intra-provincial variation.

For example, she said, while the immunisation rate for the country stood at 82 percent, certain districts in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal had coverage rates as low as 40%.

The report will form part of South Africa's report to the UN at the Millenium Review Summit that begins on September 14 in the US. -BuaNews

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