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Special Theme: Develop a Child
ADB's challenges and directionsIf Asia and the Pacific are to be free of poverty, the adults of the future must have good health, sufficient knowledge, and adequate life skills. This means that high priority must be given to investment in children today. The Poverty Reduction Strategy provides the guidelines for ADB's help in realizing the international development goals (IDGs) for 2015. ADB will promote regional initiatives and country programs that ensure balanced attention to the survival, growth, development, and learning capacity of the region's children. It supports the Asian Vaccine Initiative and agro-industrial partnerships between the public and private sectors to eliminate micronutrient malnutrition, especially the Universal Salt Iodization Initiative and anemia control programs. Market-based solutions to health and nutrition problems are more likely to be sustainable. ADB will assist both the regional dialogue and the mobilization of additional resources. At the country level, ADB will emphasize core programs in community health and nutrition. It will continue to support programs for control of childhood diseases and for safe motherhood and reproductive health care. It will encourage community-based nutrition for mothers and preschool children. ADB will continue to support Education for All (also one of the IDGs). It will support better education access and retention for children of the poor. Its aim is to improve the quality of education for all children, but in particular it will try to ensure that poor children acquire the skills needed to improve their lives. ADB will seek to link its education investment to broader sector reform¡ªdesigned to improve education efficiency (and therefore financial sustainability), enhance equity, and strengthen quality. ADB will also increase its support for nonformal education. The focus of ADB environmental assessments will be broadened to encompass the child's environment. Sector investments in agriculture, water supply and sanitation, industry, education, and health can contribute to child growth and development. Country economic reporting will emphasize trends in the achievements of children, much as the United Nations Development Programme does by designating the under-five child mortality rate as the most sensitive indicator of equitable economic and social development. Subregional cooperation is necessary in South Asia and Central Asia, the areas posing the greatest challenges, to promote the development of children. Solutions applied systematically in several countries with close cultural and political ties make sense. ADB will support subregional cooperation for child development. Millions of children in Asia and the Pacific provide sad and silent testimony to the fact that economic development does not by itself reduce poverty. Children have to be put at the top of the human development agenda. The cost of helping children reach their potential is not small, but the cost of not helping them is far greater. Develop a child, develop a nation.
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