OTTAWA, Oct 1 (AFP) - Spouses of government leaders in the Americas announced Friday their joint endorsement of six projects designed to improve the health of women and children across the continents.

The projects ranged from improved health education to combatting the transmission of AIDS from mothers to their infants.

In a joint statement issued at the end of their three-day conference, the first spouses noted: "More than 1.7 million people live with HIV/AIDS in Latin America and the Caribbean; 390,000 are women and nearly 30,000 are children.

"Mother to child transmission is the largest source of HIV infection in children under the age of 15."

The participants agreed to step up the campaign for political and public support to reduce the transmission of HIV and AIDS, focussing on "the transmission of the disease from mother and child."

The women also announced their support for a campaign by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) to ensure that all children in Latin America and the Caribbean are registered by 2005.

This followed a Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) report which showed that many children were unregistered and therefore failed to get an education or essential health services.

The spouses also agreed to back a UNICEF initiative to promote pre-school education for children under the age of six.

Noting that more than 250,000 children under the age of five die in the Americas of preventable diseases, they backed a PAHO plan to educate parents, communities and health-providers on the importance of good nutrition and vaccinations.

Another PAHO project to receive the first spouses' support is for the expansion of perinatal, maternal and child health services in Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua and Peru.

The group said they also wanted to see increased education in schools and through the media on the fights against domestic violence.

In a joint statement, the wives said this should become part of the curricula in both primary and secondary schools because "domestic violence, when witnessed by children, affects their performance at school and has long-term implications for their development."

Conference host Aline Chretien, wife of Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, said poverty remained a key problem throughout the hemisphere.

Emphasizing her roots in a working class district in the province of Quebec, Chretien said: "As someone who grew up in a poor community, I know that being born in poverty does not mean there is no escape from poverty."

The theme for the final day of the three-day conference was set by Irene Klinger, PAHO Chief of External Relations who pointed out that 20 percent of infants born each year in Latin America "have adolescent mothers, three percent have mothers under the age of 15."

And these "adolescents and their infants face higher mortality and morbidity rates due to pregnancy related complications."

Emphasizing that many of these adolescent mothers are from the hemisphere's poorest communities, Klinger said their contraceptive needs were not being met and many were forced to seek abortions.

Some 16 percent of maternal deaths in Latin America were due to unsafe abortions, she said.

"Women's risk of dying during pregnancy in Latin American countries," said Klinger, "ranges from one in 17 in Haiti, one out of 510 in Panama and one in 7,000 in Canada."

The moderator of the Ninth Conference of Spouses of Heads of State and Government of the Americas, Huguette Labelle, of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), said the role of the spouses was to raise "public awareness (which) plays a critical role in understanding the issues affecting women and children."

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