$39 billion needed vs pneumonia
LONDON – To fight pneumonia, the world’s top killer of children, United Nations officials say they need $39 billion over the next six years.
On the first World Pneumonia Day yesterday, the World Health Organization and UNICEF are releasing a global plan aiming to save more than 5 million children from dying of pneumonia by 2015.
The plea for money is less than what has been spent on more high-profile diseases like AIDS, despite the fact pneumonia kills more children than AIDS, malaria and measles combined.
“This is very simply the biggest killer people never hear about,” said Orin Levine, a public health expert at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health, who has advised WHO and UNICEF.
Pneumonia accounts for about 20 percent of all child deaths every year; AIDS causes about 2 percent.
Some experts say the neglect of pneumonia is the health community’s own fault. “While public health experts have long known the scope and severity of the scourge, they haven’t effectively mobilized the backers to put pneumonia on the map,” said Mary Beth
Powers, a child health expert at Save the Children. – AP
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