Today, on the day that the AU-EU summit opens, more than 13,000 African children under the age of five will die, most from easily preventable illnesses, Save the Children said.

Save the Children called on African leaders to fulfil their promises made in Abuja in 2001 to spend at least 15% of their annual budgets on health.

Martin Kirk, Save the Children's Head of Campaigns and Advocacy, said: "Almost five million children under the age of five die each year in sub-Saharan Africa.

"The majority of these deaths are caused by diarrhoea, pneumonia and malaria - illnesses that are easy to prevent and treat."

Save the Children called on leaders to follow the example of Malawi, Liberia, Rwanda and Burkina Faso which are already spending 15% of their annual budgets on health care.

The international children's charity is also demanding that members of the European Union live up to their promises to spend 0.7% of their gross national income (GNI) on overseas aid. 

"So far only Sweden, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Denmark have hit this target - a target set almost 40 years ago," Mr Kirk added. "We want EU countries to reach this target as an urgent priority to drastically cut the number of child deaths every year."

He said the world's governments had already acknowledged the urgent need to tackle the outrageous problem of millions of child deaths when they adopted the fourth Millennium Development Goal in 2000, to reduce the number of child deaths from the 1990 figure by two-thirds before 2015. 

"But the world is falling desperately short of this target. The only way for millions more children to grow up healthy is for all governments to fulfil their promises to increase health funding, so that  essential basic healthcare reaches the poorest children in the poorest communities."