Brazil's progress in achieving the millennium development goals.

The Government of Brazil has been attaching great importance to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals—(MDGs). Three National Monitoring Reports [1–3] have been produced, based on detailed official data of these goals, as a partnership between the Brazilian Government and the agencies comprising the United Nations System in the country. The Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA) and the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), both linked to the Ministry of Planning, Budget and Management, were responsible for the selection and analysis of the indicators used, coordination of the thematic groups and consolidation of the final text of the reports. In this article, particularly, we will focus on the 1st MDG.