UNICEF chief to visit India, UK on health and protection mission

United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director Ann M. Veneman travels to India and the United Kingdom this week for a trip focusing on issues critical to children’s health and protection, culminating with the launch in London of the agency’s flagship publication, the State of the World’s Children 2006.

In Delhi, she will open the Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunization (GAVI) Partners meeting where UNICEF and the UN World Health Organization (WHO) will present the funding requirements and potential impact of immunization over the next 10 years.

Ms. Veneman also assumes the chairmanship of the GAVI Board as it enters a new phase of operation which, in addition to introducing new and under-used vaccines into the poorest countries, will focus on integration of other life-saving interventions into immunization programmes.

While in India, she will meet with children affected by HIV/AIDS as part of UNICEF’s campaign to put them at the centre of the global response to the pandemic, rounding up her trip with a visit to an innovative child survival project in Rajasthan, which delivers routine immunization, water, sanitation, education and other services.

On 13 December Ms. Veneman will participate in a UNICEF co-sponsored rolling conference on child survival in London, and the following day she will launch ‘Excluded and Invisible,’ the State of the World’s Children 2006 report which focuses on children who are otherwise overlooked.