"At the halfway mark to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) deadline of 2015, the world has not made the necessary progress, but success is still possible given certain conditions, said World Bank economist Zia Qureshi, lead author of this year’s Global Monitoring Report.

While much of the world is on track to halve extreme poverty by the deadline, prospects are much graver for the goals of reducing child and maternal mortality, and serious shortfalls are also expected in education, nutrition, and sanitation. On current trends, Sub-Saharan Africa could miss all the MDGs, despite impressive growth performance of recent years"