By Zoe Eisenstein Luanda, Angola

Decades of war are still hurting the children of Angola

The south-west African nation has had almost two years of peace after a devastating 27-year civil war.

But it still boasts the world's third worst statistics for deaths of children under five years old.

One in four Angolan children will die before their fifth birthday and their mothers are also at far greater risk than elsewhere in the world.

Alarming figures released recently by the United Nations children's agency also show that Angola suffers from one of the world's worst rates of maternal mortality.

But according to Tuesday's state-run Jornal de Angola, the government has pledged to cut the rate of child deaths in half by 2008.

Ambitious project

Exactly how they will do that remains unclear - but the paper says enhancing access to health, increasing the availability of vaccines and improving the treatment of illnesses will form part of the plan.

This may be an ambitious project.

After nearly three decades of war, the guns have fallen silent. But malaria, measles and polio still claim thousands of lives each year.

Angola is sub-Saharan Africa's second largest oil producer after Nigeria but it will take will as well as money to rebuild a health system destroyed by conflict.

Angola's budget for 2004 allocated around 5% to the health sector - more than ever before.

But for many health workers, that simply is not enough - it is still well below the regional average which stands at around 7%.

And they say it is unjust that a country so rich in natural resources should be investing so little in the health of its people.