1st Global Forum on Childhood Pneumonia

From 29 to 31 January 2020, over 300 representatives from 16 governments, UN and global health agencies, NGOs, companies, and academic institutions came together to strategize better ways to protect children from the infection that kills more of them than any other – pneumonia.

The inaugural Global Forum on Childhood Pneumonia was held at CaixaForum in Barcelona, Spain. Attendees agreed on practical pathways that governments and their partners could take to reduce child pneumonia deaths to the levels required to achieve both the Global Action Plan for Pneumonia and Diarrhoea (GAPPD) target (3 child pneumonia deaths for every 1,000 babies born by 2025), and the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) for child survival (at least 25 child deaths for every 1,000 babies born by 2030).

The forum culminated in a Declaration committing signatories to six critical actions. All forum attendees signed onto the Declaration and more than 200 organizations have signed it subsequent to the event.

Further the forum released the world’s first Youth Call to Action on Childhood Pneumonia.

In April 2021, more than one year after the forum, 16 governments came back together in a series of three virtual roundtables to report their progress during a year when all were dealing with the demands of a massive respiratory pandemic – COVID-19.

Despite this, progress was being made. Indeed much of the support needed to prevent, diagnose, and treat COVID-19 among adults, could benefit children with pneumonia from other causes. Governments and their partners seized this opportunity to strengthen their health systems to prevent deaths from respiratory infections across all ages and causes.

The 1st Global Forum was a collaboration of nine global health agencies who share a commitment to child survival.