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Ambitious plan by the WHO to combat pneumonia
Preventing the death from pneumonia of 5.3 million children by 2015 – this is the objective of the action plan launched by the WHO and UNICEF.
Pneumonia is in fact the leading cause of death in children and kills 1.8 million under-5s worldwide each year, 98% of whom live in 68 developing countries … and 19,500 in Europe.
The Global Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Pneumonia is based on three lines of attack. Firstly, protecting children by providing an environment where the risk of pneumonia is low: this means ensuring a suitable diet, preventing low birth weight, reducing domestic pollution, regular hand washing and exclusive breastfeeding up to the age of 6 months. The second line of attack involves vaccination against the principal causes of pneumonia (measles, whooping cough, etc), prevention and treatment of HIV in children and administering zinc in the event of diarrhoea. And for those children unfortunate enough to contract the disease, the systematic implementation of an appropriate antibiotherapy will help to reduce the number of deaths.
If these different stages are adhered to, the WHO and UNICEF hope to achieve a 65% reduction in mortality and 25% reduction in the number of serious cases compared with the figures for the year 2000. In Europe, 47 of the 53 WHO member states will have introduced antipneumococcal vaccination by the end of the year. Implementation of this plan will cost 39 billion dollars between 2010 and 2015.
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