Australia's Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance says the pacific region is seriously off track to achieving Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, by 2015
Bob McMullan's office has released the second annual Tracking development and
governance in the Pacific report.
He says around 400,000 children across the region are still not making it into a primary school and about 6 percent of children in the region are dying before the age of five.
Meanwhile in some Pacific countries the number of mothers dying while giving birth is getting worse.
The report highlights the need for a new development framework for the Pacific to ensure better prioritisation of expenditure by Pacific Islands governments and better coordination of all resources for development to achieve the MDGs.
Launching the report, Mr McMullan said regional governments are mutually accountable for the results achieved, and that better plans, budget frameworks and financial systems that prioritise resources to the MDGs are needed.
Some countries have made significant progress towards the MDGs like the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu who have more than halved their rates of malaria infection between 2003 and 2008.
