UNICEF targets deadly diarrhoea, pneumonia in poor kids
(June 08, 2012) Concerted efforts to control diarrhoea and pneumonia, the biggest
killers of children under the age of five, could save the lives of up to 2 million
of the world's poorest children each year, the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF,
said on Friday. The lives saved would be largely in Sub-Saharan Africa and South
Asia, according to a new study from the Fund. "Scaling up simple interventions could
overcome two of the biggest obstacles to increasing child survival and help give every
child a fair chance to grow and thrive," said Anthony Lake, executive director of
UNICEF. The study called for coherent and reliable distribution plans for new vaccines
against the major causes of pneumonia and diarrhoea - including the influenza virus,
rotavirus and pneumococcal bacteria. It noted that one of the simplest and most
effective ways to protect babies from disease is exclusive breastfeeding during the
first six months of life, although fewer than 40 percent of infants receive such protection.
"Infants not breastfed are 15 times more likely to die due to pneumonia than are exclusively
breastfed children," it noted. Pneumonia and diarrhoea, which often occur simultaneously,
account for 29 percent of deaths among children under five worldwide - or more than
2 million a year. Nearly 90 percent of the children who die from the two diseases
live in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, the report said. It noted that about half
of those deaths occur in just five mostly poor and populous countries: India, Nigeria,
the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan and Ethiopia.