KABUL (AFP) — Afghanistan has made significant strides in protecting its children since the 2001 fall of the Taliban but there remains much to do, a senior UN official has said. The country has the world's third-highest mortality rate for children under five, according to a report by the UN's children's organisation UNICEF released Tuesday which put the figure at 257 of 1,000. The figure was down 25 percent from 2001, the year the Taliban government was toppled, UNICEF director for South Asia Dan Toole told reporters in Kabul Tuesday. "It is something that is unprecedented, not expected, given all the difficulties that there were here. But it demonstrates political will, concentrated attention where it matters most," he said. Nonetheless, the country still has a "very, very long way to go," he said. Afghanistan's infant mortality rate ranks behind only that of Sierra Leone and Angola. Toole said efforts to improve the lives of children must focus on communities and families. Work towards "improvement in child health must focus on communities, empowering and giving them the tools they need to raise their children to make sure their children are healthy, to make sure the women are healthy...," he said. He also pointed to progress in the region, notably in Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh which he said had all been able to reduce child mortality by 50 percent since 1990. Worldwide, around 40,000 children were dying per day in 1982 but this had dropped to 27,000, the UNICEF report said.