Morning Briefing

Anirban Chatterjee, chief of health and nutrition for UNICEF in Ghana, said the country "is doing a lot" to fight child mortality -- referring to a recently launched vaccination campaign and an initiative to educate mothers about nutrition -- but "I don't think it's enough" to reach the fourth U.N. Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to reduce the under-five mortality rate by two thirds by 2015, Inter Press Service reports. "I think there is definitely scope and need for more improvement," he added, according to the news service. A GAVI Alliance-supported campaign to provide vaccines against rotavirus and pneumococcal disease is underway, but Chatterjee added that efforts to improve nutrition need to be provided simultaneously because he "said malnourishment can sometimes double or triple the chances of dying from a condition like diarrhea or pneumonia," IPS writes.