Research
Pneumonia is the world’s leading infectious killer – claiming 2.5 million lives, including 672,000 children, in 2019. COVID-19 added another 3.5 million to the death toll in 2021, bringing the total number of respiratory infection deaths to 6 million. No other condition causes anywhere near this burden of death. Yet, a disproportionately low amount of research funding is allocated to pneumonia relative to pneumonia’s heavy disease burden and compared with other leading infectious killers – such as HIV/AIDS and malaria.
According to a 2020 Lancet study:
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- Pneumonia attracted just 3% of infectious disease research funding between 2000 and 2017
- 80% of pneumonia research funding came from just two US-based research funders and was narrowly focused on basic science
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This amount of funding and narrow focus is not guided by the global disease burden, pandemic risks nor the priorities of researchers and policymakers. Increasing the amount and scope of pneumonia funding is critical to improve the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of pneumonia, and subsequently reduce the huge burden of death and our vulnerability to respiratory infection pandemics.
To mobilize more investment in childhood pneumonia research, the Every Breath Counts Research Group surveyed 108 leading pneumonia experts between November 2019 and June 2021 to develop a list of research priorities with the potential to accelerate reductions in child pneumonia deaths and enable countries to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
They identified 20 pneumonia research priorities with preventing neonatal pneumonia, the development of inexpensive, rapid point-of-care diagnostic and etiological tests that differentiate between bacterial, viral, and malaria infections, and access to pulse oximetry and medical oxygen emerging as leading priorities for future research. Critically, the list of priorities differed between experts based in high-income countries and those based in low- and middle-income countries, with the former prioritizing the urgent need for neonatal pneumonia research while the latter prioritized vaccine and health system capacity research.
To ensure that these childhood pneumonia research priorities influence global investments in the countdown to 2030, Every Breath Counts members are engaging the leading infectious disease research funders to make the case for increased investments against these 20 priorities, with a special focus on investing in researchers and institutions based in low-resource settings.
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New and noteworthy pneumonia research
Peer-reviewed publications with the potential to transform the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of pneumonia, especially in low-resource settings.
Supporting Early Career Researchers
List of new publications on a critical area of pneumonia research from early career researchers, especially working in low- and middle-income countries.
Child Pneumonia Research Investment Scorecard
Scorecard of the top 20 global and low- and middle-income country childhood pneumonia research priorities and the number of research grants focused on each.