Global health officials have announced a 10-year action plan to eradicate childhood deaths from diarrhea and pneumonia by 2025.
Released by the United Nations Children’s Fund and World Health Organization in April, the plan would triple access to antibiotics and oral rehydration salts for children. Diarrhea and pneumonia killed 2 million children in 2011, according to WHO.
“Too often, strategies to tackle pneumonia and diarrhea run in parallel,” said Elizabeth Mason, MSc, WHO director of maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health. “But as countries like Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Malawi, Pakistan and Tanzania are already showing, it makes good health sense and good economic sense to integrate those strategies more closely.”
The action plan calls for 90 percent of children to have access to antibiotics for pneumonia and oral rehydration salts to treat diarrhea, up from 31 percent and 35 percent, respectively. The plan also calls for at least half of all children to be exclusively breastfed, for all children to have access to improved sanitation and safe drinking water and for 90 percent of children to be vaccinated against pneumococcal bacteria and rotavirus.
Another target is for priority investment in the population groups with the poorest access to services to prevent and treat pneumonia and diarrhea. Nearly 90 percent of deaths from the two illnesses among children now occur in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.
“This is a question of equity,” said Mickey Chopra, MD, PhD, global head of UNICEF’s health programs. “Poor children in low-income countries are most at risk of death from pneumonia or diarrhea but much less likely to get the interventions they need.” He said if the same interventions accessed by the richest 20 percent of households are made available in the 75 countries with the highest death rates, 2 million children’s deaths could be prevented by 2015.
The Integrated Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Pneumonia and Diarrhea is available at www.who.int.
- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association
