World Vision has accused G8 leaders meeting in Italy this week of failing to honour aid pledges to the world’s poorest countries.

The aid agency is disappointed with the progress made towards fulfilling the Millennium Development Goals to halve extreme global poverty by 2015.

It is particularly concerned over efforts to meet the goal to reduce avoidable child deaths from killer diseases by two-thirds.

World Vision says the G8 need to more than triple aid on primary
health care from less than $5 billion to $15 billion a year if they are to meet the MDGs.

World Vision UK’s head of Public Affairs and campaigns, Patrick Watt, said the Italian Government was using national economic problems "as an alibi for its total failure to honour its aid pledges" to the world's poorest countries, while the other G8 countries and France in particular were "taking their cue from this dismal abdication of responsibility".

“The saying that ‘prevention is cheaper than cure’ is nowhere more true than in the case of child health," he said.

“Left unchecked, child deaths and the poverty associated with them threaten to set back by a generation the prospects of economic progress and political stability in the world’s poorest regions.

"The real Italian Job of the G8 is to demonstrate that it is more than a ‘self preservation society’, and is able to recognise its responsibility to fulfil its
promises to the world’s poorest people."

World Vision is calling on the G8 to step up efforts to meet existing commitments on child and maternal mortality and agree timebound plans for how each donor will meet its aid promises. It also wants the G8 nations to reach the collective target of giving $130 billion in aid by 2010.