The diseases that make most of the news to be the leading cause of child-deaths are AIDS and malaria and not diarrhea and pneumonia.

Despite the availability of cheap tools to help prevent both these diseases, they contribute in killing an estimated 3.5 million kids under 5 every year globally which is way more than HIV and malaria combined.

Dr. Tesfaye Shiferaw, a UNICEF official in Africa said, "They have been neglected, because donor or partnership mechanisms shifted their emphasis to HIV and AIDS and other issues, these age-old traditional killers remain with us. The ones dying are the children of the poor."

The biggest killer of children under the age of 5 is pneumonia claiming more than 2 million lives every year. In other words this disease claims 20 percent of the total child deaths.

Pneumonia can be treated with inexpensive antibiotics when detected early. The UNICEF and World Health Organization estimate less than 20 percent children sickened receive the drugs.

A vaccine is available since the year 2000 but it has not yet reached many children in the developing countries.

Diarrheal diseases kill 1.5 million children every year and most of them are under 2 years old. The main causes of death are dirty drinking water, weakened immune systems and malnutrition.