As the world marks 2018 World Pneumonia Day, research has revealed that the ailment though preventable and treatable accounts for 16% of deaths of infants under age five.
While Nigeria joins the rest of the world to mark World Pneumonia Day 2018, civil society organisations from Africa and Haiti are asking their governments to step-up to eradicate Pneumonia which is responsible for more child mortalities than any other diseases like AIDS, Malaria and Measles combined.
The President of ONG AGIS, Mr. Aboubakar Sylla, speaking at a conference on how to end Pneumonia in Africa, said that, “Despite the efforts that have been made so far, much more work still needs to be done, particularly in poor communities. Every child, regardless of where they were born, need to access life-saving vaccines and medicines.”
According to reports, the most affected children live in poor and rural communities in many African countries. These are areas that often lack access to vaccines and other prevention and treatment tools.
Experts also gave that a million children could be saved with more prevention and treatment interventions but unfortunately, the vaccine against Pneumonia is the most expensive, making it’s sustainability a great challenge for countries that are transitioning from Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunization GAVI’s support.
Also, many people are still not aware of its overwhelming death-toll, and this has led its prioritisation to be overshadowed on the global health agenda. It also gets very little attention in the media.
African governments have however been called upon to allocate more finances for immunisation and broaden vaccines access within their countries during routine vaccination campaigns, for the disease to be eliminated on the continent.
Pneumonia can be easily prevented using vaccines and treated with medicine. There is evidence of commendable progress towards its elimination such as the drop in annual deaths from 1.7 million to an estimated 920,000 between 2000 and 2015.
African governments need to honor their commitments to Immunisation and shape the vaccine market to ensure sustainability for the Pneumonia vaccine.
To ensure that governments stick to their commitments, the civil society organisations are amplifying their voices for more financial investment for Immunisation by governments, scale-up of vaccination campaigns to reach the most remote locations and for more community sensitisation to demand for immunisation services from their leaders during this key campaign date of the 33 Days to Power Up Immunisation.
Meanwhile, Medical Director of God’s Goal Hospital, Lagos, Dr. Gabriel Omonaiye has corroborated the statistics, telling New Dawn it is possible the deaths of children under age five as a result of pneumonia may be up to the given 16% given its prevalence.
“The statistics could be right, as pneumonia is one of the top killers of children under the age of 5,” Omonaiye said.
On prevention and treatment, Omonaiye added that the best methods are: “Immunisation, good and prompt treatment of children with pneumonia, good and adequate nutrition before, during and after illness and financially empower the people so that they can afford quality medicare.”
