The Child Health Policy Initiative (CHPI) was launched by the Regional Office in October 2003. Five countries, namely Egypt, Morocco, Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic and Tunisia, joined the first phase, during which a thorough situation analysis was carried out to identify key policy issues to be addressed in the national child health policy document. A first workshop on CHPI was held in Damascus in July 2004 to review progress of work in those five countries. As part of the Initiative, the Regional Office developed the document "Development of National Child Health Policy - Phase 1: The Situation Analysis". This second workshop aims to review the child health situation analysis reports developed by the 5 countries and plan for the next steps leading to the development of the national child health policy documents. The experience will be shared with other countries in the Region which have expressed interest in joining the Initiative, namely Iraq, Jordan, Oman and Pakistan.