Cape Town — Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has rejected the findings of a report showing SA is not on track to meet its millennium development goals for reducing child and maternal mortality.

The Countdown to 2015: Maternal, Newborn and Child Survival report for 2008, published by The Lancet medical journal, shows SA's child mortality rates increased from 60 to 69 deaths per 1000 live births between 1990 and 2006, while maternal death rates remained unchanged -- 400 per 100000 live births.

The United Nations Millennium Development Goals are a set of eight targets, including reducing child and maternal deaths by two-thirds and three-quarters respectively between 1990 and 2015.

Speaking to delegates at a conference convened to discuss progress towards reaching these goals, Tshabalala-Msimang questioned the baseline data against which SA's progress had been measured.

"Much of the baseline data is not reliable as it mostly excluded the majority of indigenous peoples of this country as a result of apartheid segregation before 1994," she said .

On Tuesday, she said SA was on track to meet the targets. "You can't say SA is slipping back. I can say SA is improving."

The editor of The Lancet, Richard Horton, dismissed Tshabalala-Msimang's claim that the report was inaccurate.

"The most reliable information we have from independent sources indicates that SA is in reverse on child and maternal mortality, and that is due to a systematic underinvestment in the health system," he said .

"It is absolutely true that we haven't tracked every single death for every single child and every single mother in SA. But from the sampling surveys we have, which are highly reliable, I think we have enough to say that SA is getting worse. That should trigger an urgent concern ... it should not trigger a rejection of those data."

The minister had tried to sweep the issue under the carpet when she spoke to delegates and failed to engage with the report's findings, Horton said.

According to the report, SA is one of only 12 countries with rising child mortality rates.