Childhood pneumonia is arguably the world’s single most neglected disease. Every year, the illness claims the lives of more than 800,000 children under five, making it the single biggest killer of children. This includes more than 153,000 newborns (or nearly 3% of global under-5 child mortality) who are particularly vulnerable to infection.
Leading up to this year’s World Pneumonia Day, join the International Vaccine Access Center for a webinar on the future of pneumonia prevention and the potential for vaccines. Since World Pneumonia Day was established over a decade ago, global implementation of vaccines to prevent pneumonia has progressed but been disrupted recently by the COVID-19 pandemic. Delivery of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCV) remains a high priority for countries since they are a critical tool for reducing child mortality; some countries have progressed with PCV rollout while also introducing COVID-19 vaccines. Investments in scaling up and measuring the impact of PCV have helped boost the pandemic response in some countries. The pandemic has pushed the widespread and successful use of mRNA vaccines to the forefront of global health and further development and attention to this platform may be beneficial for the future of PCV in low-resource settings.
Panelists:
- Arup Deb Roy, MD, Project Director @John Snow, Inc.
- Keith Klugman, MD, PhD, Director, Pneumonia @Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
- Lee Hampton, MD, Pediatrician and Medical Epidemiologist @Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance
- Wangeci Kagucia, PhD, Research Fellow @KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme
Register: bit.ly/wpd-2021-reg
When: November 11, 2021, 10:00-11:00 AM Eastern Time