Children in East Asia and the Pacific are living longer and more are being educated compared to 10 years ago, said UNICEF.
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The conclusion came during an assessment of the welfare of the region's children presented at a biannual conference that ended in Beijing today.
More are living to their fifth birthday and beyond, more mothers are surviving childbirth, more families have clean water to drink and polio has been eradicated in all but two countries, UNICEF said.
But disparities are growing and many children still suffer preventable health and social problems, UNICEF said as it urged the 250 participants from the 21 countries at the conference to put children at the top of their national agenda.
"There's very good progress in education, but there's work that needs to be done: 97 percent of children are in school . . . but six million children are not in school," UNICEF regional director Mehr Khan told a press conference.
Regional governments need to protect the region's children from threats such as AIDS, UNICEDF said.
More than 2.4 million people in the region are infected with HIV/AIDS and hundreds of thousands have died. Many hundreds of thousands more will become infected and millions of children will suffer from AIDS as their parents fall sick and die, UNICEF said.
The conference also heard eight countries failed to reduce malnutrition among children younger than five - meaning one-fifth of the region's youngest are still moderately or severely malnourished.
AFP