World Pneumonia Day

World Pneumonia Day (12 November) provides an

GAVI Alliance, and the Sabin Vaccine Institute

joined together in a call to action asking people to participate in World Pneumonia Day on 2 November.

Pneumonia is a preventable and treatable disease that sickens 155 million children under 5 and kills 1.6 million each year. This makes pneumonia the number 1 killer of children under 5, claiming more lives in this age group than AIDS, malaria, and measles combined.Despite the overwhelming death toll of pneumonia, it rarely receives coverage in the news media.^[1]^[2] World Pneumonia Day aims to help bring this health crisis to the public’s attention and encourages policy makers and grassroots organizers alike to combat the disease.

Affordable treatment and prevention options exist against pneumonia.

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

.

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.

References

External links

World Pneumonia Day

[1] The Forgotten Killer of Children

[2] Nicholas Kristof

[3] PneumoADIP

[1]

[2]