The 6th annual World Pneumonia Day on Wednesday, 12 November aims to highlight the fact that pneumonia remains the world’s leading killer of children under five years old. While pneumonia affects children in every country around the world, in 2013, nearly all of the 900,000 deaths among children occurred in developing countries.
What makes the global burden of pneumonia such an immense and unique tragedy is the fact that this disease is preventable and curable. Tools and strategies that are not expensive to implement are available, including antibiotics that cost less than fifty cents (USD) per treatment course. This year’s theme of “Universal access to pneumonia prevention and care” stresses the need for governments and health systems to act on behalf of children and ensure that these existing tools are accessible to all who need them.
One way to prevent children from getting pneumonia is to provide them with the pneumococcal vaccine. Since 2010, the newest pneumococcal vaccine has been rolled out in 25 countries, and more than 10 million children have received it, but millions of others have not and are still at risk.
Malawi has demonstrated that government health services can deliver standard case management and significantly reduce the case fatality rate among children aged 2 to 59 months with severe and very severe pneumonia. Their successful programme is based on The Union’s Child Lung Health Programme, which tested an approach using the principles of the DOTS TB strategy from 2000 to 2005. The results of this programme were published in PlosOne in July 2014.
Other broad protection measures include exclusive breastfeeding through the first six months of life, adequate nutrition, regular hand washing and access to clean water and sanitation. Eliminating indoor air pollution—especially from indoor cookstoves—also reduces children’s risk of developing pneumonia. Children are more likely to die from pneumonia in places where they lack access to these protective measures.
But because pneumonia is an illness with a variety of causes—including bacteria, viruses and fungi—a comprehensive approach to preventing and treating pneumonia is critical to eliminating these unnecessary deaths among young children.
The Union is one of the 140 organisations worldwide that formed the Global Coalition Against Childhood Pneumonia, which organises World Pneumonia Day. Learn more about events taking place at www.worldpneumoniaday.org
Learn more about the Child Lung Health Programme in Malawi: Reducing Deaths from Severe Pneumonia in Children in Malawi by Improving Delivery of Pneumonia Case Management. PE Enarson, et al. PlosOne, 22 July 2014.
Photo by Jim Mullins