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LONDON, Friday (Reuters)-Six million children in poor countries who die from preventable illnesses each year could be saved but intervention and treatments are not reaching them, health experts said on Friday.

Fifty percent of the deaths in children occur in six countries - India, Nigeria, China, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia. The illnesses they die from range from diarrhoea, pneumonia and malnutrition to malaria and HIV/AIDS which can be prevented or treated.

"We could save six million child lives every year just by doing what we already know how to do if people would put their heart and money into it. It is not a question of technical know-how," Dr Jennifer Bryce of the World Health Organisation (WHO) told a news conference.

But although doctors have the means to prevent the deaths, they are not being incorporated into public health policies.

In the latest issue of The Lancet medical journal, Bryce and other child health experts urge the United Nations, governments, development agencies and scientists to focus on child health and survival.

"We see child survival as the most pressing moral and political issue of our time," Lancet editor Richard Horton said.

Nearly all of the deaths of young children occur in poor countries but interventions such as promoting breast feeding, improving nutrition, insecticides to prevent malaria, vaccinations against infections and improvements in water and sanitation could prevent the illnesses.

And those that do occur can be treated with anti-malarial medicines, antibiotics and therapies for diarrhoea.

"Most of these interventions are not reaching half of the children who need them," said Dr Cesar Victora, an epidemiologist at Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil. The Commission for Macroeconomic and Health estimates that to increase interventions by 2007, $7.5 billion a year would be needed, less than the amount wealthy countries spend on pet food annually.

The U.N. Children's Fund, UNICEF, said it agreed with the findings but said it is simplistic to suggest that an approach that worked in the 1980s would have a similar success.

"There are much more complex challenges we are facing now, including AIDS and conflict," Alfred Ironisde, a UNICEF spokesman, told Reuters.

Weak healthcare systems in poor countries and disproportionate spending on the health needs of the rich are compounding the health problems of the world's poorest children.

"The key issue is we need political will. We need political will at international level," Victora said. "We need political will by donors from rich countries and we need political will within developing countries which are not prioritising the survival of their own children.".

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