By KUNA
Geneva : The World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday that a new study showed that treating children with severe pneumonia at home was just as effective as treating them in hospitals.
WHO added that this finding could significantly change the way the illness was managed in developing countries, saving a significant number of lives every year and taking pressure off health systems.
Pneumonia is the largest single killer of children under five years old around the world.
Almost four children die from pneumonia every minute. About 60 percent of pneumonia cases in the developing world are caused by bacteria and can be treated with antibiotics, whereas most cases of pneumonia in developed countries are viral.
In the study, there were 87 (8.6 percent) treatment failures in the hospitalised group, and 77 (7.5 percent) in the group treated at home. Of the five children (0.2 percent) who died during the study, four were in the hospitalised group and one was at home.
The research, conducted in Pakistan by researchers from Boston University School of Public Health and supported by WHO and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), will be published this week in The Lancet medical journal.
It involved 2037 children with severe pneumonia who were randomly assigned to get either injectable antibiotics in a hospital or antibiotic pills at home.
The trial was the first to compare the outcomes of hospital treatment of severe pneumonia with home-based treatment, and the results demonstrate the safety and efficacy of treating it with oral antibiotics outside of a hospital setting.
This study confirmed the findings of other trials at sites in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, which showed that oral antibiotics were just as effective as injectable antibiotics in treating hospitalised children with severe pneumonia.
The current guidelines advise health workers to provide oral antibiotics for cases of non-severe pneumonia and to refer severe and very severe cases to hospitals for treatment with antibiotics by injection.
However, many children with severe pneumonia who are currently referred for admission to a hospital either die before they reach there or are so sick by the time they arrive that nothing more can be done to save them.
A small number of cases of very severe pneumonia (around 2-3 percent of all pneumonia cases) will still require treatment with injectable antibiotics in a hospital.
The study said that a community-based approach would bring treatment to people’s homes, so that children with pneumonia could be identified and begin treatment before the onset of life-threatening complications.