By Prashant K. Nanda, IANS
New Delhi : Over 1,090 Indian children under five years of age die every day battling pneumonia, a less talked about but fatal disease that is common across the country.
Nineteen percent of the total under-five mortality in India is due to pneumonia, according to the latest ‘State of the World’s Children Report’ by United Nations Children fund (Unicef). The illness claims the lives of 399,000 children in India every year.
“Pneumonia is a silent killer. It kills more children than malaria, AIDS, measles and injuries together do,” said Marzio Babille, head of children’s health at Unicef India.
The report has revealed that every year 2.1 million children in India do not survive to celebrate their fifth birthday.
Of all the children who die, 19 percent die due to pneumonia, 17 percent due to diarrhoea, eight percent due to malaria, four percent due to measles and three percent each due to AIDS and injuries.
“The country has done a good job in many areas, but a lot of focus is required on the pneumonia front,” Babille said, adding: “It’s a forgotten killer of children”.
Pneumonia is an inflammatory illness of the lungs. It can result from a variety of causes, including infection due to bacteria, viruses, fungi or parasites. It can also be caused by chemical or physical injury to the lungs.
The disease affects the lungs’ capacity to absorb oxygen from air. Symptoms include cough, chest pain, fever and difficulty in breathing.
Another global report published by WHO has said that more than half of all pneumonia cases worldwide occur in the Asia-Pacific region. Of the 133 million childhood pneumonia cases around the world, India accounted for 44 million and China accounted for 18 million.
According to health ministry officials, India has not devised a potent strategy to tackle this health menace.
“The country needs to have a nationwide drive against pneumonia. The drive should be modelled after AIDS, polio and TB immunisation drives,” an official told IANS requesting anonymity.
He said pneumonia vaccine circulation in the country is less than 10 percent as against over 70 percent in South Korea and over 40 percent in Hong Kong.
He, however, said that the National Rural Health Mission has taken note of the situation and efforts are on “to boost the vaccination programme”.
The Asian Strategic Alliance for Pneumococcal Disease Prevention (ASAP), a conglomerate of experts from 20 countries, recently met in Seoul and expressed their concern over the problem.
Said Nitin Shah, ASAP member from India: “Nearly 50 percent of these under-five pneumonia deaths are caused by pneumococcal pneumonia. Creating awareness of pneumococcal disease would be a great initiative.”
Pneumococcal pneumonia causes lung and ear infections and could also lead to meningitis – a brain fever that could be fatal.
In its report, Unicef said: “Since a large proportion of severe pneumonia cases in children of the developing countries are bacterial in origin, they can be effectively treated using inexpensive antibodies at home.”