UN child-death campaign 'failed'

New York, 13 Jan-(ANA)-A UN programme to combat child deaths from disease in West Africa has failed, a Johns Hopkins University study says.

Unicef spent $ 27m (£ 17m) rolling out vaccinations, vitamin A pills and bed nets to protect against malaria from 2001 to 2005 in areas of 11 countries.

The researchers studied parts of Ghana, Mali and Benin and said children often survived better outside the UN scheme.

Unicef said the programme succeeded in raising standards of care across whole countries, not just in target areas.

But Jennifer Bryce, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said there had been "too many missed opportunities to save children's lives".

"The lives of many children with pneumonia, diarrhoea or malaria could have been saved if a trained community health worker had been on hand to provide correct treatment," she said. (ANA)

FA/ANA/13 January 2010---