Pneumonia Kills Children Too

We’ve written about pneumonia here at Blisstree, but most often we talk about seniors and their susceptibility to the illness (November 2: World Pneumonia Day). Sadly, pneumonia also claims the lives of many children around the world.

Hugh Laurie

Save the Children is an organization that works to improve the health of children all over the world, including North America. In April of this year Save the Children Artist Ambassadors Gwyneth Paltrow and Hugh Laurie helped establish World Pneumonia Day, which took place on November 2, 2009. The goal of the day was to mobilize efforts to fight pneumonia, a neglected disease, that kills more than two million children under the age of 5 each year worldwide.

“I work on a TV show that features the unusual, the bizarre, the unique. But the cases on House are brightly-colored minnows compared to the leviathan of pneumonia,” said actor and Save the Children Artist Ambassador Hugh Laurie. “It’s so big, you couldn’t make a TV show about it. But you could change it. So could I. We can and must change it.” (Source)

Gwyneth Paltrow

“We have what it takes to prevent and cure childhood pneumonia. Yet the disease tragically claims more than two million babies and toddlers every year,” said actress and Save the Children Artist Ambassador Gwyneth Paltrow. “We can stand on the sides and continue to watch this tragedy unfold or we can step in and change the ending. World Pneumonia Day gives everyone the chance to
act.” (Source)

Why are children susceptible to developing pneumonia? All around the world, millions of children are malnourished and don’t have access to basic health care: two things that can decrease the incidence of pneumonia significantly.

U.N. agencies say pneumonia is responsible for one in four child deaths, more than HIV/AIDS, malaria and measles combined. Every 15 seconds a child dies of pneumonia. More than 98 percent of these deaths occur in 68 developing countries. (Source)

The people who run the Save the Children  organization developed a game to help people learn what they do and don’t know about pneumonia. How much do you know?

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Images: ZumaPress.com and Save the Children