Africa failing to cut infant deaths - report

CAPE TOWN, April 16 (Reuters) - African countries have made the least progress among developing nations towards a U.N. goal of cutting infant and maternal mortality by two thirds by 2015, a new report showed on Wednesday.

The 10 countries with the worst infant mortality records were in sub-Saharan Africa, hard hit by HIV/AIDS and civil strife, Peter Salama, chief of health at U.N. children's agency Unicef, said at the release of the 2008 Countdown report.

"Many of these countries where under-five mortality has actually increased since 1990 are high HIV prevalence countries... such as Botswana, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and South Africa," Salama told reporters.

He noted that none of the countries that had made the most progress were in sub-Saharan Africa.

Chad had made the least progress, with 209 out of every 1,000 children dying before the age of 5 in 2006 compared to 201 deaths in 1990. Peru had made the greatest strides, reducing the number of deaths to 25 per 1,000 from 78 in 1990.

China had the lowest maternal mortality rate, and was making progress, along with Haiti and Turkmenistan, in reducing child deaths.

The report, which includes Unicef and the World Health Organisation as partners, measures progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals on reducing child and maternal mortality by two thirds by 2015.

Each year about 10 million women and children die from preventable diseases, with poor nutrition, weak health systems and lack of funds seen as major challenges.

The report's authors suggest an extra $10 billion is needed to improve intervention and reduce death rates. Many of the 68 countries suffer severe shortages of doctors and nurses.

Countries that had improved had increased vaccination programmes and distributed more vitamin supplements and insecticide-treated mosquito nets, the report said.

(Reporting by Wendell Roelf; Editing by Matthew Tostevin)