Brazil achieves 2 UN Millennium Goals in advance

Brazil has achieved two out of the eight UN Millennium Goals ahead of the 2015 deadline in its campaigns to reduce the infant morality rate and extreme poverty, showed a government report on Friday. Brazil achieved the infant mortality rate reduction goal four years before 2015, according to a monitoring report on Brazil's progress on the Millennium Goals, which was presented to President Dilma Rousseff earlier in the day in a ceremony in Brasilia. Brazil was supposed to cut back on infant mortality rate by two thirds until 2015, a goal already achieved in 2011 when the rate fell to 17.7 deaths for every 1,000 living births from 53.7 deaths for every 1,000 living births in 1990, according to the report. The sharp reduction in child mortality rates was attributed to the expansion of public healthcare programs and to campaigns to encourage breastfeeding. However, the mortality rate is still deemed high in the report. Meanwhile, the country also chalked up a success in its fight against poverty, the report showed. Extreme poverty was supposed to fall 50 percent by 2015. By 2012, 3.6 percent of the population lived in extreme poverty conditions, compared with 13.4 percent in 1990, it showed. Praising the efforts, Rousseff said that Brazil managed to reduce poverty without damaging anyone in the process. "We have reduced inequality not by taking anything from anyone, but by increasing the income of poorer citizens. The wealth of the rich in Brazil increased, but much less than the income of the poor," she said. Brazil is not expected to achieve in time the Millennium Goal of improving maternal health and reducing the mortality rate of women on childbirth. According to the government, the high number of C-sections in Brazil remains an obstacle to achieve that goal, as 54 percent of childbirths occurred in the country in 2011 were C-sections, much more than the 10 percent to 15 percent recommended by the World Health Organization. The report said that Brazil has positive perspectives on the remaining five Millennium Goals: ensuring universal primary education; boosting gender equality; fighting AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and promoting a global partnership for development.