World Pneumonia Day

Pneumonia is the single biggest infectious killer of adults and children – claiming the lives of 2.5 million, including 672,000 children, in 2019. Children under five years old and adults over 70 years make up 75 percent of pneumonia deaths. Most pneumonia deaths occur in low and middle-income countries. 

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has highlighted the danger of pneumonia particularly in adults, with almost 47 million cases globally and 1.2 million deaths to date.

To end the preventable burden of childhood pneumonia and deaths there is a need to:

Raise awareness about pneumonia, the leading killer of young children.

Strengthen, accelerate and sustain interventions to prevent and treat pneumonia.

Focus on equitable access to, and delivery of comprehensive pneumonia prevention and control programs.

Design specific strategies to reach the “harder-to reach” populations to improve their accessibility to available interventions.

Conduct research to develop innovative strategies to reduce the burden of pneumonia.

Together, we can end preventable deaths from pneumonia.