This year World Pneumonia Day, 12 November 2020, will be held during a global pandemic that is dramatically increasing pneumonia deaths from COVID-19 and other causes, especially because of the global crisis in access to medical oxygen.
COVID-19 could add more than one million to the death toll this year. This could increase ‘all-cause’ pneumonia deaths by 70%. No other infection causes this burden of death. Further, disruptions to healthcare services are estimated to cause up to an additional 2.3 million child deaths – 35% from pneumonia and newborn sepsis alone.
Many countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America who are struggling with heavy burdens of both COVID-19 and pneumonia deaths from other causes will need more effective strategies to fight both. Investments in infection prevention (masks, social distancing, hand washing etc), is vital, and improved diagnosis and treatment with pulse oximetry and oxygen can save many lives during the pandemic – and beyond.
This World Pneumonia Day, we are calling on governments and other stakeholders to ensure that the massive effort to control the pandemic contributes to reducing ‘all-cause’ respiratory infections and deaths among both children and adults for the long term.
This World Pneumonia Day, we are calling on governments and other stakeholders to ensure that the massive effort to control the pandemic contributes to reducing ‘all-cause’ respiratory infections and deaths among both children and adults for the long term. Investments in medical oxygen particularly will not only prevent COVID-19 deaths but deaths from many other causes.
In the words of Gargee Ghosh, President, Global Policy and Advocacy, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation:
“Oxygen has always been an essential medicine. COVID-19 is teaching the world just how essential. This World Pneumonia Day, let’s all agree to work more effectively to increase access to medical oxygen.”
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In 2009, a diverse group of committed doctors, advocates, academics, UN officials and business people came together to change the way the world responded to pneumonia, the “forgotten killer of children”. When they launched the first World Pneumonia Day in November, pneumonia was killing 1.2 million children each year.
Read our blog post, written by Leith Greenslade from the Every Breath Counts Coalition, to find out what’s changed in the decade since then – the progress that has been made, and the still-daunting challenge ahead.
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Pneumonia is the leading infectious cause of death in children under five and, as a result, the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, or PCV, is one of the most lifesaving vaccines. However, just six in every ten children are protected with PCV well below the global target...
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