LONDON (Agencies) -- Releasing a new study Tuesday showing that around 29,000 children under five years old die around the world every day, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) called for stronger health services in countries with high child mortality and increased Government and donor support for child survival.

The call was backed by a meeting of political and health experts in New York, organized jointly by the Norwegian Government, the Lancet medical journal and UNICEF, focusing on ways to prevent the deaths of millions of children before their fifth birthday, and the head of the Fund said lessons should be learnt from countries’ success stories.

“Dramatic gains in child survival within some countries point the way toward successful strategies that can work on a broader scale,” said Ann M. Veneman, UNICEF Executive Director. “Such strategies include integrated, community-based approaches that address maternal and child health, nutrition, AIDS prevention and water and sanitation.”

However panel lists at today’s meeting also highlighted the fact that few of the countries with high child mortality levels are on track to reduce under-five mortality by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015 -– the fourth of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a list of targets aimed at reducing poverty and other social ills.

Vaccines, antibiotics and other drugs can improve child survival in 60 poor African and Asian countries where most of the deaths occur but efforts to control and treat childhood diseases such as pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria are fragmented and funding is lacking.

"We have the knowledge. We know what will work in order to save children's lives," said Dr Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet medical journal, which has devoted a special issue to child survival.

"It's fair to say there has been a catastrophic donor failure of funding for child survival," he added.

In the special issue, which coincides with a meeting of heads of state and health experts in New York to reduce child deaths, the experts identity the countries most in need and estimate that an additional $7 billion a year in aid is needed.

"The absolute level of funding is too low. We're about $7 billion short of where we need to be on an annual basis," Horton added in a telephone briefing.

In addition to too little money, research has shown there has been an imbalance in the way aid is distributed so countries in the greatest need do not always receive the appropriate funding.

Horton said it has not always been clear where the greatest need has been but better data on countries will improve the allocation of funds. --------------------Pneumonia biggest killer

Pneumonia, an illness that can be treated, is the single biggest killer of children, killing 2 million under 5s each year.

"That is more than HIV, malaria and measles combined," said Dr. Peter Salama, the head of child survival at the United Nations children's agency UNICEF.

UNICEF and its partners have carried out a focused assessment of key maternal, neonatal and child survival indicators across the 60 countries with high child mortality, and this was also published Tuesday in a special issue of the Lancet.

These countries account for 94 percent of all under-five deaths worldwide.

The majority have made little or no progress on child mortality, while 14 countries saw child mortality rates increase between 1990 and 2004.

Only 7 of the 60 countries with the highest child mortality are on track to meet a Millennium Development Goal to reduce under 5 mortality by two-thirds by 2015.

Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, Indonesia, Mexico and Nepal and Philippines were described as doing well, according to Salama.

Thirty-nine countries are making some progress but 14 nations are cause for serious concern, according to the researchers.

"The greatest challenge is to take what we know, which is a lot ... and package it in a way that is feasible and implementable on a large scale for Africa and south Asia where the majority of the deaths occur," said Salama.