A staggering 29,000 children under the age of five are dying each day from preventable causes worldwide, a report from UNICEF Canada says.

Despite huge progress during the past 50 years, curable diseases are still taking a horrifying toll -- particularly in developing nations where HIV/AIDS is rampant, the report says.

"We got so seized by the drama of the tsunami in Christmas of 2004, but this death rate is the equivalent of a tsunami for children every week," said UNICEF Canada CEO Nigel Fisher.

UNICEF says 10.6 million children are dying globally every year from preventable causes including pneumonia, malaria and measles.

Fisher noted that 2006 child death rates in some developing countries remain above 200 per 1,000.

"And you've got Canada, where our child mortality rate is only six per 1,000," he said.

HIV/AIDS

UNICEF says an estimated 1,800 children are also infected with HIV every day -- mostly through transmission from mother to baby during pregnancy, childbirth or breast feeding.

Yet, effective means to prevent and treat HIV-AIDS exist, the report observes.

In industrialized nations, the rate of mother-to-child transmission is now less than one per cent.

However, in developing countries, less than ten per cent of pregnant women have access to services that can prevent HIV transmission to their babies.

"With the advances of the past five decades, we could bring these diseases to their knees and break the back of the HIV-AIDS pandemic, but we need greater political will and action," said Fisher.

Polio

One of the most dramatic examples of progress cited in the report is the success of the global fight against polio.

In 1988, polio was endemic in 125 countries. As of February 2006, just Afghanistan, India, Nigeria and Pakistan have yet to stop the transmission of the polio virus within their borders.

"The message for Canadians is it is absolutely possible to save the lives of millions more kids fairly simply," Fisher said. "It is possible to make change."

Among preventable diseases that continue to take a toll:

• Pneumonia and other respiratory infections kill about two million children a year and are the leading cause of death for those under five.
• Diarrhea kills 1.6 million children annually.
• Malaria takes the lives of 3,000 African children a day, making it the largest cause of death for children under five on the continent.
• Measles kills more than half a million children a year.

UNICEF is funded by voluntary contributions and works in 155 countries and territories to protect the lives of children. It is the world's largest provider of vaccines for developing nations.