MAPUTO, Aug 12 (AFP) - The United Nations Childrens' Fund is set to spend about four million US dollars on anti-AIDS programs in Mozambique this year, a UNICEF official said.

The UN agency has already provided Mozambique's recently established National AIDS Council with 30,000 dollars to get its operations running, UNICEF official Ian MacLeod told AFP late Friday.

"We just felt that the AIDS council must be able to start operations as soon as possible," he said.

MacLeod said the government, non-governmental organizations and society as a whole must work together to prevent the spread of the deadly disease and to support children orphaned by AIDS.

An estimated 16 percent of Mozambique's 17 million people carry the HIV virus and around 700 new infections are reported daily in the impoverished southern African country.

Mozambique ranks behind Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Swaziland and South Africa as the nation with the seventh highest incidence of HIV infection.

About 250,000 Mozambican children have lost parents to AIDS, and UNICEF estimates that about one million children will be orphaned within the next five to six years.

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