This is one of my favorite photographs from a recent trip to Nigeria. I love how happy this little girl is to be with her big brother, as he looks at her with that I-know-so-much-more-than-you attitude of all older siblings. It’s an interaction that could have taken in Philadelphia, Baltimore or Cleveland, but I took it when I was at the University College Hospital of Ibadan.

I was in West Africa to make a documentary on the impact of new vaccines and pneumonia prevention efforts in developing countries.  After years working at a pharmaceutical company where I was fortunate enough to launch these new vaccines, I realized that something was missing.  I was surprised to learn that the percentage of deaths due to pneumonia was so high (almost 1/5 of all post neonatal deaths).  Ninety-five percent of these deaths occur outside of the US, Europe and other industrialized countries, yet it was in the developed world where we did most of our business.  We often forget about children in the developing world.  We see pictures of desperate, hungry children and rationalize well, if I don’t do this one thing, something else will kill them anyway.  But all you need to do is travel to one of these countries to realize that children are the same all over the world.  You forget that they are still grappling with some of the diseases that have long been out of our minds for children in our country.

Pneumonia? Who would have thought that this is such a large problem for young children?  In fact, it is the illness that leads to the most deaths worldwide – over 2 million young lives lost every year, a child every 15 seconds.   We have access to pneumonia vaccines and antibiotics to treat – child deaths due to pneumonia are relatively rare in US and Europe.  These deaths unfortunately occur all too often in the developing world.

While at the hospital in Ibadan, I spoke with mothers waiting outside the vaccine clinic. Many of them hadn’t heard of pneumonia, although one mother had lost her daughter to the disease, or as she described it to me, a “cold in her bones.” What was so heartbreaking about her story was how easily it could have been prevented. For only $20 USD, her daughter could have been fully immunized against pneumonia with Hib and Pneumococcal vaccines, similar to those given to our children in the US, and while non-vaccine-preventable strains exist, an appropriate course of antibiotic treatment costs less than $1.00.

The mothers I met that day are not the only ones unfamiliar with pneumonia. Many global health leaders and donors are unaware of the magnitude of this disease or the full range of effective tools available to protect children. In an effort to overcome this legacy of neglect, global health advocates around the globe are banding together today to commemorate the first ever World Pneumonia Day. Our shared goal is to bring greater attention to this disease and to motivate policymakers and donors to control child pneumonia through the protection, prevention, and treatment strategies recommended by the Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Pneumonia (GAPP).

We often see images of sick children losing the battle against poverty and disease, but I think one of the reasons I like this photo so much is that it reminds me of the joy a child’s recovery can bring. Pneumonia is a common and deadly disease, but it is stoppable. World Pneumonia Day is an important first step in making the leading killer of children a global health priority.

If you’d like to learn more about child pneumonia or what you can do to support World Pneumonia Day, please visit our website.

Related posts:

1. Can 30 seconds of your time change a child’s life?
2. Saving Money while Saving Lives: The Economic Argument for Childhood Vaccination
3. If he could speak, what would he tell our leaders? Tell them for him.
4. The Value of Health: Creating Economic Security in the Developing World: Disruptive Women in Health Care is Going Global with a New Series and e-Book on Global Health
5. Prioritizing Tuberculosis (TB) Vaccine Research

This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 5:58 am and is filed under Advocacy, Guest Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.