Although Sierra Leone country has an abundant supply of diamonds, the country is mostly dependent on aid from organisations like UNICEF to survive, because of corruption and economic mismanagement.

UNICEF runs various programs throughout the country focusing mainly on providing healthcare, child protection, sanitation and education.

Soccer legend David Beckham, who has been a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since 2005, took a four-day trip to Sierra Leone in January 2008 to focus the world’s attention on the issue of child survival in general and Sierra Leone in particular.

“In Sierra Leone, one in four children dies before reaching their fifth birthday,” said Beckham, a father of three.

“It’s shocking and tragic, especially when the solutions are simple – things like vaccinations against measles or using a mosquito net to reduce the chance of getting malaria.

Saving these children’s lives is a top priority for UNICEF – and as an ambassador, I hope I can help to draw attention to this issue across the world.”

The trip took place during the lead-up to the release of UNICEF’s yearly report, the State of the World’s Children 2008. This year’s report cites Sierra Leone as having the highest rate of infant mortality in the world.

After arriving in the country’s capital, Freetown, Beckham’s first stop was a health clinic near the town of Makeni, which has the highest number of under-five deaths in the country.

He met with patients, many of whom were familiar with the sporting hero, and learnt about the most common causes of these deaths, such as malaria, diarrhoea, malnutrition and vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles and TB.

“We can’t turn a blind eye to the tens of thousands of young children who die every day in the developing world, mostly from causes that are preventable,” said Beckham.

At another village, Beckham helped to hand out insecticide-treated bed nets to young mothers and pregnant women. The Goodwill Ambassador also met with local children, to whom he gave autographed soccer balls and playing tips.

One of the more dramatic stops on Beckham’s tour was a UNICEF-supported therapeutic feeding centre that supplies babies and infants – most of whom are barely 70 per cent of their ideal weight - with life-saving nutritional supplies.

Here Beckham met some of the children, such as Senyo, 5, whose limbs are weak from malnutrition, and Foday, also 5, who is painfully small for his age. Beckham also saw malnourished babies who survive on water because their starving mothers cannot breastfeed.

UNICEF UK’s executive director David Bull said: “We are grateful to David Beckham for shining the spotlight on the unacceptable number of young children who are dying, often needlessly, in Sierra Leone and other developing countries.

Everyone can play a role in changing this situation – governments, donors and the public.”