World observes Pneumonia Day

The World Pneumonia Day is being observed toady to create awareness regarding this deadly disease that is affecting approximately 450 million people per year across the world and causing deaths among all age groups especially in children.

In order to spread this day’s importance, Child Pneumonia, an international network of non-governmental and community-based organisation, organised different seminars, published awareness pamphlets and arrange different forums for child specialist doctors
to address the general public as how fatal this disease is becoming and spreading around the world.

This year’s World Pneumonia Day theme “I am the face of pneumonia” is very objective and contains the very idea of different individuals’ stories and illness related sufferings which directly depicts the every phase of this disease.     

 “We know that pneumonia can be treated quickly and effectively with affordable antibiotics, yet it remains the world’s number-one killer of children,” said Patrick Watt, Global Campaign Director at Save the Children. “Today’s results show that health workers
treating children with severe pneumonia in the home is a practical way of saving children lives. Recruiting, training and supporting more frontline health workers is at the heart of the solution.”

Later, Dr Elizabeth Mason, Director of WHO’s Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health, said with great detail, “The results of the Pakistan trial are very promising, and we will be looking closely at future studies. If we see similar
results in other places, we can update the global guidance to make treatment much more accessible for families, help governments make the most of limited resources, and save more children’s lives.”

No one knows the exact figure and the damage that has been done by this disease but the Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Pneumonia (GAPP) and the WHO and UNICEF did release on World Pneumonia Day in 2009 as 1 million children’s lives
are at stake very year because prevention and treatment interventions are not available especially in the third world, the most poorest countries.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=3356

Posted by Umair Hassan on Nov 12 2011. Filed under Pakistan, World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry