KHARTOUM, Oct. 27 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Sudan on Tuesday warned that the child and maternity mortality rates in the country were close to emergency and urged responses at all levels with a sense of urgency.

    "It is shocking that every year about 305,000 children under the age of five die. Almost 110,000 of those die within 28 days of being born," said Nils Kastberg, UNICEF Representative in Sudan, in a press conference in Khartoum Tuesday.

    "It is also totally unacceptable that every year 26,000 women die giving birth in Sudan, just over 13,300 in the south and 12,700 in the north," he added.

    The UNICEF representative attributed the high mortality rates among children and mothers to the high level of disease and poor health facilities, saying "malaria, outbreaks of acute watery diarrhea and vaccine-preventable disease are some of the major killers."

    He called for an urgent action to reduce the number of children under the age five dying by a third, to cut maternal mortality by a third and to cut the number of children out of school by a third, pointing out that around 2.9 million children out of 5.7 million in Sudan are out of school.

    Kastberg said the highest child and maternity mortality rates were at the conflict zones, saying "the only way to improve the lives of Sudan's children is through sustainable peace. We need to feel very strongly that the time has come not to pay the price of war but instead to pay the price of peace."

    He urged the government of southern Sudan to enhance child and maternity health and provide a healthy environment to help reduce the child and maternity mortality rates.

    A recent population census in Sudan showed 18.5 million persons were under the age of 16 years and that 6 million were under the age of five years, which indicates that children represent the biggest part of Sudan's total population of 39 million.