The BBC World Service Trust campaign will also use radio and TV commercials and radio phone-in programs to highlight reproductive, maternal and child health issues, project head Giselle Portenier told reporters.

"We are hoping to have a huge impact on HIV/AIDS and maternal and child health," Portenier said at a two-day workshop on HIV/AIDS and maternal and child health in the capital.

"In Cambodia today, one in eight children are dead before the age of five," she said. "We hope that we will be able to help in changing that. We also hope to bring down the prevalence of HIV/AIDS."

With 2.8 percent of its adult population or 170,000 people infected with the virus, Cambodia clocks in with the highest HIV infection rate in Asia.

About 80,000 people have already died of AIDS in Cambodia, where the epidemic has spread dramatically, mostly due to widespread prostitution, since the country opened in 1993 after decades of conflict.

Portenier said she believed the campaign would be the biggest of its kind that the impoverished Southeast Asian kingdom has seen.

Secretary of state for health Mam Bun Heng welcomed the campaign, which is sponsored by the British government.

"We have been in discussions about this project with the BBC for a number of years and we are pleased to see how our ideas have developed and grown," he said.

TERRA.WIRE