Daily Champion (Lagos)
Mansur Oladunjoye
1 November 2009
THE much-dreaded pneumonia disease is said to be responsible for the death of more than four million people annually with half of them being children under five years.
The Lagos state Commissioner of Health, Dr. Jide Idris, stated this at a news briefing last Friday as part of activities to mark the first Lagos World Pneumonia Day slated for November 2 with the theme, "Fight pneumonia, save a child."
He said pneumonia was an infection of the lung caused by organisms like bacteria virus and fungi; bacteria-haemophilus influenza b discovered to be responsible for about 50 per cent of cases in children under five years.
He said: "Therefore, to effectively combat the acclaimed leading childhood killer disease-Pneumonia, there is the need to be a revitalised focus on policies guiding the management of the disease including the allocation of resources", he said, adding that the death rate is also high in Lagos, though the total percentage of residents' loss to pneumonia annually could not be ascertained.
His words: "Statistics shows that, pneumonia kills more than four million people every year, and half of these deaths are in children under five years, that is, every 15 seconds, a child is lost to Pneumonia, 5, 500 every day and an unbelievable two million every year.
"An estimated 98 per cent of children who die in a developed country, more than 2000 children die in developing countries," he stated.
According to him, it was recently confirmed that Pneumonia leads in infant morbidity as well as mortality in the world followed by malaria, vaccine preventable disease and diarrhea.
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