According to a study, pneumonia is expected to kill nearly 11 million children by 2030

Pneumonia will kill nearly 11 million children under five by 2030, experts warned Monday at a global day to raise public awareness of the biggest infectious killer of infants in the world.

While in developed countries, serious lung infections mainly affect the elderly, in developing countries, it is the children who suffer, hundreds of thousands of people dying every year of an easily preventable disease.

More than 880,000 children – mostly under the age of two – died of pneumonia just in 2016.

A new analysis conducted by Johns Hopkins University and the Save the Children aid group, using forecasts based on current trends, showed that more than 10,800,000 children under 5 would succumb to the disease from here the end of the next decade.

In addition, a handful of countries are on the brink of carrying the heaviest burden: 1.7 million children in Nigeria and India, 700,000 in Pakistan and 635,000 in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Still, there is good news.

The study, published on the occasion of World Pneumonia Day, revealed that extending existing immunization coverage, combined with cheap antibiotics and healthy diets for children, could save a total of 4, 1 million lives.

Pneumonia, an inflammatory infection of the lungs that can be contracted by a viral or bacterial infection, can be treated if it is detected early enough and the patient's immune system is not compromised.

But all over the world, it strikes young children, often weakened by malnutrition, killing more babies each year than malaria, diarrhea and measles combined.

"It is incredible to believe that nearly one million children die each year from an illness for which we have the knowledge and resources to defeat," said Kevin Watkins, chief executive of Save the Children.

"There are no pink ribbons, world summits or pneumonia marches, but anyone who cares about justice for children and their access to essential health care, this forgotten killer should be the determining cause of our time. "

The Watkins group, which runs health programs in some of the countries most affected by the disease, has asked that the prices of the major existing vaccines against pneumonia be lowered "dramatically".

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