UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Countries around the world will need to hire 18 million teachers to meet a goal of universal primary education by 2015, the United Nations said in a report Tuesday.

UNESCO, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, warned that nations in sub-Saharan Africa were the worst off, with a need for 1.8 million teachers by then.

"We have a crisis that is almost beyond magnitude," said Peter Smith, UNESCO's assistant director general for education "But it's a soft one and easy for people not to worry about it."

The findings were announced in a UNESCO report that studied the number of teachers needed around the world by 2015, and the quality of education students get. The release was timed with 'Education For All Week', an event meant to push governments to live up to their promise of universal education by that year.
The commitment was one of the Millennium Development Goals set by world leaders in 2000.

The report came a day after President George W Bush's wife, Laura, announced an initiative to combat global illiteracy. More than 800 million people around the world can't read.

Smith acknowledged that many of the targets for universal education would be all but unreachable, particularly in countries ravaged by AIDS. Mozambique, for example, would have to hire 150,000 teachers - more than three times the number it now has - to combat the loss of teachers, many of whom will die of AIDS.

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