One of the greatest MDG successes in Asia and the Pacific has been on poverty reduction. Between 1990 and 2008, the countries of the region reduced the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day from 1.5 billion to 947 million, and the region is on track for the poverty goal. Moreover, for some other indicators the Asia-Pacific region as a whole has already achieved the targets – for reducing gender disparities in primary, secondary and tertiary education enrolment, for example, for preventing a rise in HIV prevalence, for stopping the spread of tuberculosis, for reducing consumption of ozone-depleting substances, and for halving the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water.

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