Food crisis may worsen African child mortality: U.N.

By Yoko Kubota

YOKOHAMA (Reuters) - The global food crisis could reverse some of the progress Africa has made in bringing down child mortality, the head of the United Nations' children's agency said on Wednesday.

"If more children become undernourished, that could contribute to additional child mortality," Ann Veneman, executive director of UNICEF, said in an interview with Reuters on Wednesday.

"This is not a crisis for everyone. It's an impact on those who are the most vulnerable."

Protests, strikes and riots have erupted in developing countries around the world in the wake of dramatic rises in the prices of wheat, rice, corn, oils and other essential foods that have made it difficult for poor people to make ends meet.

In African nations such as Cameroon, at least 24 people were killed in protests in February while in Somalia, thousands protested earlier this month.

Veneman is in Japan to launch UNICEF's State of Africa's Children 2008 report which says that five million children died in Africa before they reached the age of five in 2006.

The sub-Saharan African countries accounted for nine of the 10 highest mortality rates for children under five in the world, said the report which was launched on Wednesday at the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD).

The UNICEF report details conditions of child survival in African nations and warns that sub-Saharan nations in Africa, such as Sierra Leone and Angola, lag on meeting child mortality rates and health issues in the U.N. Millennium Development Goals.