Fighting for Breath
A call to action to stop children dying from pneumonia
Pneumonia is a forgotten health epidemic, killing more children than any other infectious disease. It claims the lives of over 800,000 children under 5 every year, or one child every 39 seconds. Almost all of these deaths are preventable. Progress on reducing these deaths, however, is slower than for most other major killers of children – and too slow to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of ending preventable child deaths by 2030.
Fighting for Breath is a briefing on the state of pneumonia, with an overview of the global death toll. It is also a call to action for governments to strengthen primary health care systems and improve quality of care to adequately diagnose and treat pneumonia as well as deliver preventative vaccines.
