February 1, 2016

DIARRHEA & PNEUMONIA WORKING GROUP UPDATE

January 28, 2016

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Every Breath Counts Campaign

Every Breath Counts, will be launched by UNICEF during the African Union Summit at the General Assembly of the Organisation of African First Ladies against HIV/AIDS. The launch will feature the campaign’s first ambassador, H.E. Aisha Muhammadu Buhari, Wife of the President of Nigeria.

 

Pneumonia kills nearly 1 million children under the age of five globally, every year; that is 100 children every hour. More children die from pneumonia than from HIV/AIDS, diarrhea and malaria combined. Despite reductions in global pneumonia mortality, progress in the highest-burden countries remains slow.  60% of all pneumonia fatalities occur in 10 countries – all of which are in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Furthermore, progress in the fight against pneumonia has been slow compared to progress in other leading diseases.  Childhood pneumonia deaths have fallen by 50% – while that signifies impressive progress, it still falls short in comparison to an 85% decline for measles, and 60% for malaria, AIDS and tetanus in the last 15 years.

 

The two-year Every Breath Counts campaign targets global leaders, policy makers and donors and is intended to bring pneumonia to the forefront.

 

Pneumonia needs not only dedicated funding, which it has been lacking over the past few decades; but specific enabling policy changes, such as community-based treatment with Amoxicillin, and robust implementation of community based pneumonia management.

 

By mobilizing public health professionals, environmental groups and government officials through the Every Breath Counts campaign, the Campaign intends to address the large disparity between funding for and burden of pneumonia.

 

Please visit our site, www.everybreathcounts.info for additional information, as well as advocacy and behavior change communications materials.

Pneumonia Prevention and Care Available for Every Child is Key to Defeat World’s #1 Infectious Killer of Children 

Posted on November 12, 2014

Media Contact:

Marian Blondeel, Malaria Consortium

Tel: +44 (0)20 7549 0552

Email: m.blondeel@malariaconsortium.org

 

On the sixth annual World Pneumonia Day, the Global Coalition Against Child Pneumonia calls for urgent action to end preventable child deaths caused by pneumonia by 2030.

(London, UK) — Every day, more than 2,500 children under age five die of pneumonia, which is close to one million each year. This is nearly 1 in 6 of the total deaths in that age group. Today, the world commemorates the sixth annual World Pneumonia Day by calling on leaders to increase universal access for pneumonia prevention and care in order to end preventable child deaths by 2030.

Although the number of under-five deaths worldwide has decreased by half since 1990, many countries are not on track to reach Millennium Development Goal 4 (MDG4), which calls for a two-thirds reduction in under-five mortality by 2015. Poor and rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are most behind on achieving this goal, with India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia accounting for almost 50 percent of total pneumonia child deaths. As we approach the MDG deadline of 2015, the world needs to speed up progress and increase political commitment toward reducing child mortality, which requires addressing preventable deaths from pneumonia, other infectious diseases, and complications around prematurity at child birth.

“Combatting pneumonia is essential to achieving the Millennium Development Goals related to health and child survival, and to laying the groundwork for ending all preventable maternal and child deaths by 2030,” said United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who launched the Every Woman Every Child movement in 2010 to accelerate progress on women’s and children’s health. “We need a persistent and integrated approach to this preventable and treatable killer of children. I call on all sectors to come together now to defeat this disease.”

Children are dying from pneumonia because proven interventions that boost their natural defences and create a healthy environment, such as adequate nutrition, early and exclusive breastfeeding for newborns, vaccinations, hand-washing with soap, and low-emission cook stoves, are not available to all. For sick children and newborns, early access to antibiotics and oxygen therapy can be lifesaving. Better equipment for the detection of pneumonia is also essential. Equitable access to the right prevention, diagnosis, and care is crucial to defeat the disease.

Pneumonia and diarrhoea together account for one quarter of all under-five deaths worldwide, and can largely be targeted by the same interventions. Moreover, bringing childhood healthcare closer to the homes of those most affected increases their access to quality prevention and care, which can save the lives of hundreds of thousands of children. The World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF’s Integrated Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Pneumonia and Diarrhoea (GAPPD) proposes a cohesive approach to ending preventable pneumonia and diarrhoea deaths.

Today, events commemorating World Pneumonia Day are being held in countries throughout the world. In India, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Sudan and South Africa, ministries of health and partners in child health, such as UNICEF, WHO, USAID, Jhpiego, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the International Vaccine Access Center (IVAC) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Malaria Consortium are organising various awareness raising activities, including panel discussions, press briefings, roundtables, lectures, and a parade.

Malaria Consortium produced radio and television programmes about pneumonia in Ethiopia, Uganda and South Sudan, and pharmaceutical company, GSK has developed a global “If Only You Pneu” video animation sharing children’s voices on pneumonia and its prevention. In the United States, IVAC also released its 2014 Pneumonia and Diarrhoea Progress Report today and the Gates Foundation pneumonia programme has announced increased funding this year for pneumonia prevention among neonates. WHO has just published new guidelines on indoor air quality and recently revised its classification and treatment of childhood pneumonia at health facilities to increase effective lifesaving interventions.

These worldwide events underline the global call by the Global Coalition Against Child Pneumonia. Strengthened commitment to reach every child with interventions that prevent and treat pneumonia is needed to reach the MDGs and must be sustained in the post-2015 development agenda. Increased investment in pneumonia interventions and a universal scale-up of those that are proven to work are crucial for populations most affected in order to defeat this killer disease.

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World Pneumonia Day was established in 2009 to raise awareness about pneumonia; to promote interventions to protect against, prevent, and treat pneumonia; and to generate action in combatting pneumonia. For more information about World Pneumonia Day, facts and figures and activities, please visit dev-stoppneumonia.pantheonsite.io.

The Global Coalition Against Child Pneumonia was established in 2009 to raise awareness about the toll of pneumonia, the world’s leading infectious killer of children, and to advocate for global action to protect against, to effectively treat and to help prevent this deadly illness. Including more than 140 non-governmental organisations, civil society organisations, academic institutions, government agencies and foundations, the Coalition provides leadership for World Pneumonia Day, marked every year on November 12th.

 

Press Release Quote Sheet

Today Marks Sixth Annual World Pneumonia Day

Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations

“Combatting pneumonia is essential to achieving the Millennium Development Goals related to health and child survival, and to laying the groundwork for ending all preventable maternal and child deaths by 2030. We need a persistent and integrated approach to this preventable and treatable killer of children. I call on all sectors to come together now to defeat this disease.”

Dr Flavia Bustreo, WHO Assistant Director General, Family, Women’s and Children’s Health

“Tackling pneumonia requires an integrated approach to look at ways to prevent and protect children from developing pneumonia in the first place as well as ways to accurately diagnose and treat the infection when present. To prevent exposure to indoor air pollution is one of the key interventions. Young children, as well as women, who spend the most time near the domestic hearth, are particularly vulnerable. Globally, more than 50% of pneumonia deaths among children under 5 are linked to household air pollution.”

Mickey Chopra, UNICEF Chief of Health

“Pneumonia disproportionately afflicts the most marginalised and the poorest children, accounting for the deaths of almost 1 million children under five each year, according to UNICEF’s latest estimates. Finding new, inexpensive and reliable ways of diagnosing pneumonia in low-resource health facilities, and being innovative in the treatment of the disease, will be crucial in reaching the most vulnerable children, and ending child deaths from this preventable cause.”

Charles Nelson, CEO Malaria Consortium

“Malaria Consortium is excited to be convening World Pneumonia Day. Working with our partners in the Global Coalition Against Child Pneumonia we have chosen to focus this year’s theme around the need for increased access to prevention and care for pneumonia. We are fully committed to defeating the world’s number one infectious killer of children. Our projects fight the disease on multiple fronts: by providing better access to pneumonia diagnostic equipment, promoting the rational use of antibiotics and bringing healthcare closer to the homes of those who need it most. Children not only need more appropriate, but also much faster care. This approach is both lifesaving and cost saving for many of the poorest families throughout the world.”

Keith Klugman, Director of Pneumonia Team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

“No parent should lose a child to preventable diseases, yet nearly 1 million children die from pneumonia worldwide every year. Through the power of life-saving vaccines and other key interventions, the world is making real progress toward curbing the spread of pneumonia and we must continue this momentum to ensure children everywhere can live healthy and productive lives.”

Seth Berkley, CEO of the GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance

“Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, is working to accelerate the availability of vaccines which protect the world’s children against pneumonia, the leading infectious killer of under-fives. Since 2000, Gavi has helped immunise nearly 200 million children with pentavalent vaccine and more than 25 million with pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV), both of which protect against leading causes of pneumonia. We are committed to further expanding access to these vaccines as part of an integrated approach to pneumonia prevention and control.”

Steve Davis, President and CEO of PATH

“More investment is needed in innovative diagnostic tools and integrative health services that combine care for other childhood illnesses, like diarrhoea, malnutrition, and malaria, to accelerate our progress in reducing preventable child deaths.”

Kate O’Brien, Professor, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Executive Director, International Vaccine Access Center (IVAC)

“We celebrate the progress in preventing pneumonia this World Pneumonia Day, while recognising the need to ensure ALL children have access to care and early diagnosis, vaccines, and medication. The devastating West African Ebola outbreak starkly highlights the gap between high- and low-income countries and inequities in systems that connect people with life-saving technologies, such as supply chains and availability of trained healthcare workers. The world’s attention is now focused on this great inequality. Let us learn from this and renew our commitment to close the access gap in pneumonia interventions and put an end to these preventable deaths.”

Allan Pamba, VP East Africa, GlaxoSmithKline, and co-chair of the UN Every Woman, Every Child Innovation Working Group

“Huge progress has been made against pneumonia, but with this infection still claiming almost one million children’s lives each year, there is much further to go. Nobody can fight pneumonia alone: frontline health workers, novel partnerships and radical innovation are all critical to delivering real change. So we are working with Gavi to deliver our pneumococcal vaccine to poorer countries. And with Save the Children, we have registered a child-friendly powder-based antibiotic to help fight pneumonia in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Private sector participation and contribution is rising and this should be encouraged.”

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Fifth Annual World Pneumonia Day Marks Successes and Challenges in Tackling #1 Killer of Children

Posted on November 12, 2013

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 12, 2013

Media Contact:

Julie Younkin, International Vaccine Access Center

Tel: +1-410-340-9784

Email: jbuss@jhsph.edu

 

Fifth Annual World Pneumonia Day Marks Successes and Challenges in Tackling #1 Killer of Children

Global Coalition Against Child Pneumonia Calls for Continued Investment in Innovations and Proven Tools

(BALTIMORE, MARYLAND) — Global health advocates today commemorated the fifth annual World Pneumonia Day by calling on global leaders to scale up existing interventions and invest in new diagnostics and treatments to defeat pneumonia. Each year, pneumonia kills more children than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. Pneumonia took the lives of nearly 1.1 million children under 5 in 2012 alone, with more than 99 percent of these deaths in developing countries, where access to healthcare facilities and treatment is out of reach for many children.

“Pneumonia, the leading killer of children under 5 years old, is especially threatening to those born premature or living where sanitation is poor,” said United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who launched the Every Woman Every Child movement in 2010 to advance progress on women’s and children’s health. “On World Pneumonia Day, I call on governments and their partners to commit to promoting breastfeeding and providing clean water, a healthy environment, and all the medicine and vaccinations children need. By working to protect children from pneumonia, we can shield them from other deadly diseases and help them to survive and thrive.”

World Pneumonia Day 2013 is marked by an integrated effort to combat both pneumonia and diarrhoea, which together account for 26 percent of all child deaths globally. Earlier this year, the World Health Organization and UNICEF released the integrated Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Pneumonia and Diarrhoea (GAPPD), which outlines specific protection, prevention, and treatment coverage targets to dramatically reduce the number of child deaths from these two diseases. Many solutions already exist to tackle both pneumonia and diarrhoea, but implementation of these interventions is not complete.

Vaccines are one of the most effective ways to prevent pneumonia and diarrhoea. Today, with support from the GAVI Alliance, Mauritania and Papua New Guinea are rolling out pneumococcal vaccine, which will help protect children against one of the leading causes of pneumonia. GAVI is on course to help more than 50 low-income nations introduce pneumococcal vaccine by 2015. By the end of next year, South Sudan will become the last of the 73 GAVI-supported countries to introduce pentavalent vaccine, which includes protection against Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), another common cause of pneumonia. Other critical solutions, such as exclusive breastfeeding and good nutrition, handwashing with soap, access to sanitation and safe drinking water, clean cookstoves and fuels, zinc and oral rehydration solution, amoxicillin, and vitamin A can substantially reduce child deaths if fully implemented.

The International Vaccine Access Center (IVAC) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health released today its 2013 Pneumonia and Diarrhoea Progress Report, which found gradual increases in access to vaccines, treatment, and other interventions in the 15 countries with the highest numbers of child deaths from pneumonia and diarrhoea. The report found that seven countries achieved some progress toward the GAPPD targets, while eight countries had not made significant progress toward reaching targets.

UNICEF estimates that 3.5 million deaths must be prevented by the end of 2015 in order to meet the fourth Millennium Development Goal, which calls for a two-thirds reduction in under-5 mortality between 1990 and 2015. Advocates have renewed their call this World Pneumonia Day for governments to do more to meet these child survival objectives by increasing political commitment to and investments in the development of new diagnostics and treatments for pneumonia. Advocates also call on manufacturers of medical devices to step up efforts to bring technologies to market, and called on donors to strengthen their support for the development and distribution of new diagnostics technologies at affordable prices.

Events commemorating World Pneumonia Day were being held in countries throughout the world. In India, partners organized a forum on the Millennium Development Goals and a media dialogue on pneumonia. Coalition members produced radio and television programs about pneumonia in Madagascar, held press briefings in Mozambique and Uganda, produced an educational cartoon in Egypt, and organized seminars on pneumonia in Nigeria. In the United States, Coalition members distributed educational materials about pneumonia to scientific audiences and partners will host a game night on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC to educate leaders about the challenges of pneumonia and diarrhoea.

Various child survival events are being held throughout the month of November. November 17 marks World Prematurity Day, organized by the March of Dimes and partners, to raise awareness of newborn deaths, and November 19 marks World Toilet Day, to focus attention on the challenge of providing adequate sanitation.

World Pneumonia Day was established in 2009 to raise awareness about pneumonia; to promote interventions to protect against, prevent, and treat pneumonia; and to generate action in combating pneumonia. For more information about World Pneumonia Day and its activities, please visit dev-stoppneumonia.pantheonsite.io.

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The Global Coalition Against Child Pneumonia was established in 2009 to raise awareness about the toll of pneumonia, the world’s leading killer of children, and to advocate for global action to protect against, to effectively treat and to help prevent this deadly illness. Including more than 140 non-governmental organizations, civil society organizations, academic institutions, government agencies and foundations, the Coalition provides leadership for World Pneumonia Day, marked every year on November 12th.

Press Release Quote Sheet

Today Marks Fifth Annual World Pneumonia Day

Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations

“Pneumonia, the leading killer of children under 5 years old, is especially threatening to those born premature or living where sanitation is poor. On World Pneumonia Day, I call on governments and their partners to commit to promoting breastfeeding and providing clean water, a healthy environment, and all the medicine and vaccinations children need. By working to protect children from pneumonia, we can shield them from other deadly diseases and help them to survive and thrive.”

Seth Berkley, CEO of the GAVI Alliance

“GAVI is helping to accelerate the fight against pneumonia by increasing access to pneumococcal vaccines, thanks to GAVI’s innovative Advance Market Commitment (AMC), but also to the five-in-one pentavalent vaccine which protects against Haemophilus influenzae type b, another major cause on pneumonia.”

Mickey Chopra, UNICEF Chief of Health

“Innovations in diagnosis and treatment of pneumonia are key to ending preventable child deaths, and especially in reaching the hardest-to-reach children. For instance, it is critical to find new, reliable ways of diagnosing pneumonia in low-resource health facilities where chest x-rays and lab tests are not readily available.”

Steve Davis, President and CEO of PATH

“Pneumonia cannot be addressed on its own, but only through integrated efforts to combat diarrhoea and other diseases. While today is World Pneumonia Day, we recognize and are committed to addressing the health challenges posed by both pneumonia and diarrhoea, and we call on leaders to fully fund and implement the measures outlined in the Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Pneumonia and Diarrhoea.”

Keith Klugman, Director of Pneumonia Team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

“It is inexcusable that pneumonia – a preventable and treatable illness – continues to be the leading killer of children under the age of 5. While significant progress has been made with an up-tick in the number of countries using life-saving vaccines to protect kids from pneumonia, we must continue to use innovative and integrated efforts to combat pneumonia, diarrhoea and other childhood diseases.”

Kate O’Brien, Professor, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Executive Director, International Vaccine Access Center (IVAC)

“Today, we pause and assess the progress in driving down illness and death from pneumonia and diarrhoea among young children. IVAC’s new Pneumonia and Diarrhoea Progress Report shows that while countries are making gradual progress implementing interventions to treat and prevent pneumonia and diarrhoea, substantially more needs to be done. Vaccines are a cornerstone of intervention strategies, but they only work if the children in communities most in need are reached. We urge national governments, development partners and international agencies to commit to all strategies to reduce this preventable burden of disease.”