Seven developing countries in Africa and Asia will be the first to take part in a new global health campaign aimed at directing aid more effectively at the basic needs of poor countries, Britain said on Wednesday.

Health ministers from Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Zambia, Cambodia and Nepal will take part in the initiative aimed at improving health systems in developing countries and better coordinating aid that flows in to these nations.

The partnership involves eight donor nations -- including Britain, Germany, France and Italy -- along with international agencies and non-profit groups like the World Health Organisation, the African Development Bank and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

"Today we come together -- donor governments, health agencies and developing countries -- with the certainty that we have the knowledge and the power to save millions of lives through our efforts," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in a statement.

The new partnership aims to reduce child and maternal mortality and tackle diseases such as HIV/AIDS by building long-term health infrastructure in developing countries and by improving coordination among donors.

Brown and German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced the creation of the International Health Partnership when they met in London last month.

Norway -- whose prime minister was set to join Brown at an event later on Wednesday to promote the plan -- is also participating, as are the Netherlands, Canada and Portugal. The European Commission, World Bank and others have also thrown their support behind the programme, the British government said.


AMERICAN SUPPORT

The United States is not participating but a senior British official said the two countries have had close discussions and that the program would receive U.S. support.

Aid agencies like Oxfam gave a guarded welcome to the plan that marks an effort to kick-start the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals aimed at sharply cutting extreme poverty by 2015.

"This initiative will only succeed if enough countries get behind it and if it mobilises additional aid to provide co-ordinated and expanded state health provision," Oxfam's director Barbara Stocking said.

As part of the bid, donors will agree to work towards providing longer term and more predictable funding to poor countries to support their health systems.

Half a million women die each year in childbirth, while 10 million children do not reach their fifth birthday and only one in four of those in need of AIDS treatment in Africa receives it.

Britain's Department for International Development said that, while programmes to combat specific diseases in developing countries had brought good results, less attention had been paid to strengthening health systems by training doctors and nurses and building clinics. It did not announce any new funding for the plan.

Some developing countries have just one health worker per 1,000 people compared with one per 100 in Europe, it said.

Poor countries can also find it costly and time-consuming to deal with many different donors, it added. As an example, in Cambodia 22 donors support 109 different health projects, making it difficult for a country to best utilize such resources, the British government said.