ISLAMABAD, Jan 2: The United Nations Children Fund (Unicef) has launched an eight-million-dollar anti-measles drive to immunize an estimated nine million children in Afghanistan, where poverty and the devastated health infrastructure combine to make the disease a major killer of children.

Speaking at a news conference here on Wednesday, Unicef spokesperson Chulho Hyun said measles was responsible for an estimated 40 per cent of all vaccine preventable childhood deaths in the country. “Nearly 35,000 Afghan children die each year of the disease out of the nearly 700,000 infected every year.”

He said 200 vaccination centres had been established throughout the country to immunize children during the campaign that would last for three months.

He said the post-Sept 11 events had drastically affected the children, whose conditions had become worse.

World Health Organization spokesperson Fadela Chaib said there was an urgent need to launch training programmes for the health workers in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance to Afghanistan (UNOCHA), Einar Holtet, said children in the north-western Afghanistan were suffering from severe malnutrition.

According to the spokesperson, the UN agencies are starting nutrition programmes in collaboration with NGOs to address the food needs of the children and the lactating and pregnant women in the north-western parts of the country.

Around 50 per cent children in Baghdis are suffering from malnutrition.