A report released by the Asian Development Bank Wednesday examines how the global economic crisis is exacerbating poverty and hunger in regions of Asia, the Associated Press/Forbes writes.

While the region has succeeded over the last 15 years in cutting the number of people who are poor “from one in two to around one in four,” the report found that in “19 Asian economies, including the most populous China and India, more than 10 percent of people live on less than $1.25 a day and more than 10 percent are malnourished,” the news service writes.

The article examines the challenges the region faces in trying to meet the U.N. Millennium Development Goals to improve sanitation, cut extreme poverty in half and maternal mortality by three-quarters by 2015 (Cerojano, 8/26).