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Tuesday, 11/03/2009
Leading Organizations Join Forces to Launch First Annual World Pneumonia Day, Fight World’s Leading Child Killer
WHO and UNICEF Release Global Action Plan to Combat Pneumonia as Part of Historic Effort
Dr. Antoni Torres, Head of Pneumology Department at the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona and Research team leader of the group Applied Research in Respiratory Diseases, says: “There are preventive and treatment strategies easy to implement that could prevent the deaths of many children”
Nearly 100 leading global health organizations from around the world joined forces today to recognize the first-annual World Pneumonia Day and urge governments to take steps to fight pneumonia, the world’s leading killer of young children. The first steps in this fight are outlined in the Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Pneumonia, released today by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF.
Pneumonia takes the lives of more children under 5 than measles, malaria, and AIDS combined. The disease takes the life of one child every 15 seconds, and accounts for 20% of all deaths of children under 5 worldwide. While pneumonia affects children and families everywhere, it has the most deadly impact in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where 98% of pneumonia deaths occur. It can be prevented with simple interventions, and treated with low-cost, low-tech medication and care.
The Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Pneumonia (GAPP), released today by WHO and UNICEF, outlines a six-year plan for the worldwide scale-up of a comprehensive set of interventions to control the disease. Countries are urged to implement a three-pronged pneumonia control strategy that:
- protects children by promoting exclusive breastfeeding and ensuring adequate nutrition and good hygiene;
- prevents the disease by vaccinating them against common causes of pneumonia such as Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcal disease) and Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib); and
- treats children at the community level and in clinics and hospitals through effective case management and with an appropriate course of antibiotics.
To learn more about World Pneumonia Day and the Global Coalition against Child Pneumonia, visit their website.