The Vijayawada chapter of the Indian Academy of Paediatrics (IAP) will launch the “Fight Pneumonia and Save a Child” campaign in the city on Wednesday, the World Pneumonia Day.
Addressing a press conference IAP unit president M.A. Rahman and secretary P.S.N. Murthy said the objective of the campaign was to increase awareness about pneumonia and ways to prevent it.
Dr Rahman said that globally pneumonia has been killing an estimated 1.4 million children aged below five every year. Unfortunately a quarter of the children killed by the disease were from India.
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The steps needed to reduce mortality of children were improving hygiene, addressing issues of malnutrition, ensuring children get breast milk for the first six months and timely immunisation, he said.
Pneumonia was an acute respiratory disease in which lung would be infected by bacteria, virus, fungus or other parasites, he explained.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), Streptococcus pneumonia, a bacterium responsible for Pneumococcal Disease (PD) was the primary cause for hospitalisations and death of children below five.
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He said PD caused 1.2 lakh deaths a year in India alone. PD which affected different organs manifested itself as lung infection (classic pneumonia), brain infection (meningitis), blood infection (bacteremia), ear infection (otitis media) and sinus infection (Sinusitis).
Infants, neonates, premature babies between 24 months and 59 months old with underdeveloped lungs, narrow airways, poor nutrition and weak immune systems faced the high risk of contracting the infection and should therefore treated with greater care, he said.
Dr Murthy said that pneumonia could be a very big burden on the families of the children and vaccination was therefore safe and cost-effective option.
WHO had included Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PCV) in the national immunisation programmes of countries where the mortality rate of children under five years was more than 50 per 1,000 live births. India was an ideal candidate for PCV in the national immunisation programme, he said.