Health

Pneumonia

Pneumonia kills more children worldwide than any other single cause

Pneumonia is the largest single killer of children around the world, responsible for the deaths of more than 2 million children under the age of five every year, accounting for almost one in five under-5 deaths worldwide. In addition, up to 1 million more infants perish from severe infections, including pneumonia during the neonatal period.

Source: Progress for Children, 2007

Preventing and treating childhood pneumonia is critical to the MDG target of reducing child deaths. However, only about one in four caregivers knows the two key symptoms of pneumonia –fast breathing and difficult breathing –which indicate that a child should be treated immediately. More than half of under-fives with suspected pneumonia in the developing world are taken to the appropriate health providers, but this proportion has increased little since 2000.

Effective interventions to reduce pneumonia deaths are available, but reach too few children. Scaling up treatment coverage is possible, and at relatively low cost. Estimates suggest that if antibiotic treatment were universally delivered to children with pneumonia, around 600,000 lives could be saved each year, at a cost of $600 million. Furthermore, the number of lives saved could more than double to 1.3 million if both prevention and treatment interventions to reduce pneumonia deaths were universally delivered.

How is pneumonia prevented?

Preventing children from developing pneumonia in the first place is essential for reducing child deaths. Key prevention measures include promoting adequate nutrition (including breastfeeding vitamin A supplementation and zinc intake), reducing indoor air pollution and increasing immunization rates with vaccines that help prevent children from developing infections that cause pneumonia such as Haemophilus influenza type b (Hib) HIV- children are less likely to develop  pneumonia if they are given  Cotrimoxazole. Recent research also suggests that hand washing may play a role in reducing the incidence of pneumonia.

How is pneumonia treated?

Prompt treatment of pneumonia with a full course of appropriate antibiotics is lifesaving. Cotrimoxazole and amoxicillin are effective drugs against bacterial pathogens and are often used to treat children with pneumonia in developing countries.

New approach needed to reduce pneumonia deaths

A new approach to reducing childhood pneumonia deaths is required that spans prevention and treatment. Families in the poorest countries, where the majority of children are affected by pneumonia, may not have easy access to health facilities. In-patient treatment may not be an option for parents who cannot leave their homes to accompany the sick child.  A community-based approach would bring treatment to people's homes, so that children with pneumonia can be identified and treated in a timely manner. Importantly, efforts to scale up community-based treatment must not be implemented in isolation from other efforts to scale up treatment for diarrhoeal diseases, HIV/AIDS, and malaria—all of which are key components of integrated child survival programmes.

UNICEF and WHO have published guidelines for diagnosing and treating pneumonia in community settings in the developing world. In the context of a comprehensive child survival strategy that aims to scale up integrated interventions, on 2nd November 2009, WHO an UNICEF launched a comprehensive Global Action Plan that can save up to 5.3 million children from dying of pneumonia by 2015. The Global action plan for the prevention and control of pneumonia (GAPP) includes recommendations on what needs to be done, specific goals and targets, and estimates of what it will cost and how many lives will be saved. For more on this, read the full report in PDF.