The Japanese government has agreed to provide 2.65 million U.S. dollars of grant aid to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Myanmar to support child health care services in the country for the year 2007.

At a launching ceremony here Wednesday for the project " Improvement of Maternal and Child Health Care Services (Phase VII) ", Japanese Ambassador in Myanmar Nobutake Odano and UNICEF's Myanmar representative Ramesh Shrestha signed the notes on the aid.

The Japanese grant aid through the UNICEF will be used for purchasing rapid test kits and medicines for malaria, vaccines for measles, essential medicaments and equipment for reproductive health, test kits for the HIV/AIDS and others.

Speaking at the ceremony, the Japanese ambassador said that the project has been developed through consultations among the Myanmar Ministry of Health, Japanese government and UNICEF, aiming mainly at improving the healthcare for mothers and children in Myanmar, especially in rural areas.

He disclosed that the Japanese government has already provided a series of assistance under the grant aid for six consecutive phases for the trilateral cooperation project totaling 29.3 million dollars from 1999 to 2005.

Japan is known as Myanmar's biggest donor country in the past. Japan had provided Myanmar with a total of 50 billion yen (426 million dollars) of Official Development Assistance (ODA) before it suspended its aid to Myanmar in 1988 for political reasons.

Japan resumed the ODA in 2001 and up to 2002, such aid amounted to 32.7 million dollars. However, Japan terminated the ODA again in June 2003 following the May 30 incident in Myanmar. It resumed such aid again in late 2003.

Source: Xinhua