By Dr. Abdul Razak Shaikh,
Pneumonia is one of the leading causes of deaths in children under five years old despite being easily preventable and treatable. Although vaccines and other preventative efforts are decreasing the burden of the disease, much more work is still required. Those living in poor communities are at the highest risk of pneumonia. Every child, regardless of where they are born, deserves access to lifesaving vaccines and medicines.
World Pneumonia Day brings people from all over the world together uniting to demand that something is done to fight the pneumonia illness. World Pneumonia Day helps to highlight t the severity of pneumonia and encourages more organizations to look at ways of combating the disease.
World Pneumonia Day (12 November) provides an annual forum for the world to stand together and demand action in the fight against pneumonia. More than 100 organizations representing the interests of children joined forces as the Global Coalition against Child Pneumonia to hold the first World Pneumonia Day on 2 November 2009. In 2010, World Pneumonia Day falls on 12 November.
The United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight international development goals that 192 United Nations member states and at least 23 international organizations have agreed to achieve by the year 2015. The fourth of these goals is to reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate. Because pneumonia causes such a large number of under-five deaths, in order to achieve MDG 4, the world must do something to reduce pneumonia deaths.
Pneumonia sickens 155 million children under 5 and kills 1.6 million each year in the world. This makes pneumonia the number 1 killer of children under 5, claiming more young lives than AIDS, malaria, and measles combined. Yet most people are unaware of pneumonia’s overwhelming death toll. Because of this pneumonia has been overshadowed as a priority on the global health agenda, and rarely receives coverage in the news media. World Pneumonia Day helps to bring this health crisis to the public’s attention and encourages policymakers and grassroots organizers alike to combat the disease.
Pakistan ranks third in the list of 15 high burden countries where the estimated deaths of children by pneumonia is alarmingly high. According to the latest report, 71,000 children die of pneumonia every year in Pakistan.
The report has also issued fresh guidelines for the world, particularly the 15 high burden countries, for prevention and control of children deaths by this fatal disease. It stresses exclusive breastfeeding during the first six months of life and adequate nutrition up to age 5 improves children’s natural defenses, protecting them from pneumonia. It says more than 50percent of pneumonia deaths among children under 5 globally were linked to household air pollution.
In spite of the massive death toll of this disease, affordable treatment and prevention options exist. There are effective vaccines against the two most common bacterial causes of deadly pneumonia, Haemophilus influenza type B and Streptococcus pneumoniae, and most common viral cause of pneumonia, Orthomyxoviridae. A course of antibiotics which costs less than $1(US) is capable of curing the disease if it is started early enough. The Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Pneumonia (GAPP) released by the WHO and UNICEF on World Pneumonia Day, 2009, finds that 1 million children’s lives could be saved every year if prevention and treatment interventions for pneumonia were widely introduced in the world’s poorest countries.
Thanks to Gavi and its partners, Vaccine against pneumococcal disease– the leading cause of pneumonia – are reaching children at an accelerated pace.
Since 2010, more than 50 developing countries have introduced the vaccine with Gavi support. In November 2014, Gavi met its 2015 target of supporting 45 introductions – more than a year ahead of schedule.
Gavi is a founding member of the Global Coalition against Child pneumonia formed in 2009 to raise awareness and to encourage governments to support the implementation of a range of proven measures to prevent and treat pneumonia.
The World Pneumonia Day seeks to raise awareness of pneumonia as a public health issue and help prevent the millions of avoidable child deaths from pneumonia that occur each year. It is organized by the Global Coalition against Child Pneumonia (a network of international, government, non-governmental and community-based organizations, research and academic institutions, foundations, and individuals) to bring much-needed attention to pneumonia among donors, policy makers, health care professionals, and the general public.
In Pakistan pneumonia was the failure of primary healthcare programmers and lack of commitment to fighting the disease.
Still, in the Thar many cases were reported in Mithi Hospital daily basis, which still needs attention towards vaccine and Nutrition to mothers. Sindh government is fully aware and trying full efforts to provide the Medicine and Doctors were also posted to help the poor people of THAR.