A new report by Save the Children has revealed that Nigeria has the highest global pneumonia mortality with 162,000 deaths recorded in 2018.
Speaking at a news conference held yesterday in Abuja to mark the World Pneumonia Day, the chief executive officer of the organization, Mr. Kevin Watkins said globally, 802,000 children under the age of five died from pneumonia in 2018 and five countries were responsible for more than half of the deaths.
Nigeria accounted for 162,000 deaths, India 127,000, Pakistan 58,000, Democratic of Congo 40,000 and Ethiopia 32,000 deaths.
He said pneumonia is the world’s leading infectious killer of children under the age five.
He lamented that so much attention is paid to the killer disease even though it could be prevented through vaccination.
According to him information from the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation 2019 and Save the Children’s Child Inequality Tracker revealed that the disease is a forgotten global health epidemic that demands a greater international response.
Watkins said millions of children are dying for want of vaccines, affordable antibiotics and routine oxygen treatment.
He said recent analysis found out that Nigerian children born in poorest households were nearly three times more likely to die from diseases like pneumonia before their fifth birthday compared to the children born in rich households.
He added that pneumonia crisis is a symptom of neglect and indefensible inequalities in access to healthcare.
He, therefore, stressed that investment in the health sector was very critical as the current three per cent budget allocation was not enough to tackle the menace.
He said that more than 40 percent of one-year-old children in Nigeria were unvaccinated and three in four children suffering from pneumonia symptoms do not get access to medical treatment, saying that there was need to ensure that vaccines get to the poorest of the poor to curb the disease.
Also speaking, the chief of party inspiring project of Save the Children, Nigeria, Dr. Adamu Isah, said children suffering from malnutrition or those who have their immune systems weakened by other infections and those living in air polluted areas are vulnerable to the disease.
He said the organisation supported the federal ministry of health to produce a roadmap to help in combating the disease.
He, therefore, urged healthcare givers to pay attention to the symptoms of pneumonia to be able to detect it early enough to combat it.
