Photo credit: Save the Children
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). That shocking figure – a life lost every 39 seconds – is falling more slowly than for other major killers, and too slowly for the world to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of an end to preventable childhood deaths. Despite the death toll and the slow pace of progress, pneumonia has received insufficient attention from the international community and – sadly – from the governments of countries in which pneumonia is a major cause of childhood mortality