BBC: World 'must do more' for children
In a new report it noted considerable strides had been made to meet pledges in education and areas of health care.
But it stressed that "much more must be done" in order to meet the 2015 Millennium Development Goals deadline.
The report identified areas for urgent action as maternal mortality, HIV prevention and pneumonia, which kills more children than any other illness.
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Unicef said its sixth Progress for Children report since 2004 was the most comprehensive to date.
It noted "some remarkable progress" in the under-five child mortality rate, which had fallen by 60% since 1960 to 9.7 million.
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The Unicef report said more than 1.2 billion people had gained access to safe drinking water between 1990 and 2004.
It said that between 1996 and 2004 rates of early and exclusive breastfeeding had increased in many countries. There had been a jump of 20% in seven countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
Unicef estimates that breastfeeding could stop 13% of all under-five deaths in developing countries.
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"An alarming number of children under five – 143 million – still suffer under-nutrition, with more than half of them in South Asia."
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More than 500,000 women still die every year during pregnancy and childbirth, about half of them in sub-Saharan Africa, the report said.
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