The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) will work with the Chinese Government to reduce regional disparities in the welfare of children.

UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said her agency's work in China would tune in with the priorities set by the Chinese Government during her meeting with Vice-Premier Wu Yi Thursday afternoon in Beijing.

She pledged to deepen cooperation with China, including fundraising, for the country's realization of children's development goals.

Wu thanked Bellamy for UNICEF's help in the improvement of the well being of children in China over the past 25 years.

She said disparities between urban and rural areas, regional disparities and poverty are still restraining the development of women and children in the country.

The vice-premier said she hoped cooperation between UNICEF and China in the next term, which would run between 2006 and 2010, could help China better address these problems.

West China is struggling to catch up with the country's overall economic growth. The central government initiated a "go-west" campaign in 2000 to stimulate large-scale development of its western regions including progress in education, health care and other social services.

Bellamy visited the Tibet Autonomous Region between Sunday and Wednesday, getting first-hand information about children's situation in western China and reviewing UNICEF cooperation with local health and education officials.

UNICEF has been working with the local government in Tibet since 1980. It has worked with 21 counties in all seven prefectures of Tibet.

"The projects in Tibet are small but they set the stage for expanding our efforts in Tibet and other areas in the western region," said Bellamy.

During her four-day visit to Tibet, Bellamy visited village households, elementary schools and township clinics in various counties of Shannan Prefecture and talked to children, parents, teachers and local health workers.

Her meeting with local health and education officials focused on UNICEF cooperation in the areas of safe motherhood, basic education and capacity building of teachers and educators.

Bellamy underscored the importance of expanding preventive health practices versus reliance on curative measures, emphasized the need to ensure that girls' education was attended to and stressed the need to converge UNICEF support in health and education in the same communities.

"We need to strengthen preventive health and do a better job of packaging interventions like education, sanitation and hygiene," she said.

In Tibet, major progress has occurred in the rate of hospital deliveries, with current coverage of 28 percent, doubling in five years but still far behind the national average of 79 percent.

In the last decade, child and maternal death rates in Tibet have dropped by around half.

Still, child mortality stands at 53 per thousand live births and maternal mortality is over 400 per 100,000 live births, up to eight times higher than the national rate.

Basic education enrolment has climbed dramatically to 92 percent, approaching the national average of 98 percent. However, only 31 percent of children in Tibet have access to the compulsory nine years of education.

Bellamy Thursday also held discussions with Commerce Minister Bo Xilai on drafting a scheme for a new round of cooperation which spans five years. The Ministry of Commerce is the coordinator for UNICEF's work with China.

(China Daily September 3, 2004)

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