Pneumonia to kill nearly 11m children by 2030, study warns

PARIS: Pneumonia will kill nearly 11 million children under five by 2030, experts warned on Monday on a global day of awareness raising of the biggest infectious killer of infants worldwide.

While in the world of severe lung infection, it is important to understand that the elderly are in the age of death.

More than 880,000 children – just aged less than two years old – died from pneumonia in 2016 alone.

A new analysis conducted by Johns Hopkins University and the aid group Save the Children 10,800,000 under-fives would be expected to succumb to the disease by the end of the next decade.

Furthermore, with 1.7 million children set to die in Nigeria and India, 700,000 in Pakistan and 635,000 in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Yet there is some good news.

The study, published on the World Pneumonia Day, found that scaling up existing immunization coverage, coupled with a total of 4.1 million lives.

Pneumonia, an inflammatory infection of the lungs that may be contracted via viral or bacterial infection, is considered treatable if caught early enough and the patient's immune system is not compromised.

But it is difficult to malnutrition, killing more children each year than malaria, diarrhoea and measles combined.

"It's worth noting that a million children are dying every year," said Save the Children CEO Kevin Watkins.

"There are no pink ribbons, global summits or marches for pneumonia. But anyone who cares about justice and their access to essential healthcare, this killer should be defining the cause of our age. "

Watkins' group, which operates in some of the worst hit countries by the disease, called pneumonia vaccines to be "dramatically."

2030 is the target date for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which includes a pledge to "end preventable child deaths" by the end of the next decade.

France Media Agency