World Pneumonia Day 2009: Join The Fight

by Mary Beth Powers

Published November 02, 2009 @ 06:06AM PT

Pneumonia is preventable and treatable; so why does a child die from pneumonia every 15 seconds? Today is the first World Pneumonia Day, and Save the Children is taking action to protect children from a disease that takes nearly 2 million lives each year – that is one child every 15 seconds. Every day in 40 countries around the world we work with parents and community health workers to provide these children with the medicine and expertise to help children survive pneumonia.

Why all the effort around the first World Pneumonia Day? It's not just the toll that pneumonia takes on children that has created an organized movement to combat this life-threatening infection. It's the fact that affordable, effective treatments exist but children in developing countries are not getting them. This is both heartbreaking and frustrating.

Many low-income countries have developed effective health strategies for protecting children from pneumonia and other childhood illnesses. Where hospitals and health clinics are beyond the reach of families, community health workers are trained to diagnose and treat pneumonia and other childhood illnesses in their own communities.

Consider 1-year old Marta who lives with her family in a Mayan community in the highlands of Guatemala. She came down with pneumonia when she was 7 months old. Her grandfather took her to the community health worker, Juan Lux, who quickly diagnosed Marta with pneumonia and gave her a dose of antibiotics. But Marta was still not out of danger and Juan referred her to the nearest hospital -- an hour-long walk over the mountains to catch a bus for the 19-mile trip to the hospital. (And on those treacherous mountain roads, 19 miles is a long, long trip!) Marta was hospitalized, treated with antibiotics and is now doing fine.

Marta is one of the lucky ones: Lucky because her grandfather sought help quickly. And luckier still because Save the Children had trained and equipped Juan Lux to provide health care for children in their little village. Without his correct diagnosis, proper treatment and referral, Marta might not have survived.

Now we are asking you to join this fight by going to www.missionpneumonia.org and getting the facts about childhood pneumonia. Should you accept your mission, this site will provide you with opportunities to make a real world difference by:

• Recruiting friends, family and colleagues to play www.missionpneumonia.org by sharing on Facebook, Twitter and email with different facts about pneumonia and the obstacles family and community health workers face
• Signing our petition to Congress on the Newborn, Child and Mother Survival Act. Show your elected officials that you support expanding the reach of life-saving tools – vaccines, antibiotics and trained health workers – to more mothers and babies in poor countries.
• Helping to provide the supplies and training Community Health Workers around the world need to help diagnose and fight pneumonia.

Our mission doesn't end with World Pneumonia Day, but it can make a strong step in the right direction. Even as I sit at my computer writing this blog post, I know that health workers like Juan Lux are making rounds in remote villages, checking the progress of sick children and following up with their parents. This makes me hopeful that we can save millions more lives by making affordable health measures to the poorest children and by bringing health care closer to children's homes.

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