World Pneumonia Day (12 November) provides an annual forum for the world in the fight against

pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severit ...

. More than 100 organizations representing the interests of children joined forces as the Global Coalition against Child Pneumonia to hold the first World Pneumonia Day on 12 November 2009.

Save The Children The Save the Children Fund, commonly known as Save the Children, is an international non-governmental organization established in the United Kingdom in 1919 to improve the lives of children through better education, health care, and economic ...

artist ambassadors

Gwyneth Paltrow Gwyneth Kate Paltrow (; born ) is an American actress and businesswoman. She is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award. Paltrow gained notice for her early work in films ...

and

Hugh Laurie James Hugh Calum Laurie (; born 11 June 1959) is an English actor, comedian, writer, and musician. He first gained recognition for his work as one half of the comedy double act Fry and Laurie with Stephen Fry. The two men acted together in ...

, Charles MacCormack of Save The Children, Orin Levine of PneumoADIP, Lance Laifer of Hedge Funds vs. Malaria & Pneumonia, the

Global Health Council The Global Health Council is a United States-based non-profit leading networking organization "supporting and connecting advocates, implementers and stakeholders around global health priorities worldwide". The Council is the world's largest membe ...

, the

GAVI Alliance GAVI, officially Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (previously the GAVI Alliance, and before that the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization) is a public–private global health partnership with the goal of increasing access to immunization ...

, and the

Sabin Vaccine Institute Sabin Vaccine Institute (Sabin), located in Washington, D.C., is a nonprofit organization promoting global vaccine development, availability, and use. Through its work, Sabin hopes to reduce human suffering by preventing the spread of vaccine-pre ...

joined together in a call to action asking people to participate in World Pneumonia Day on 2 November. Pneumonia is a preventable and treatable disease that sickens 155 million children under 5 and kills 1.6 million each year. This makes pneumonia the number 1 killer of children under 5, claiming more lives in this age group than AIDS, malaria, and measles combined.Despite the overwhelming death toll of pneumonia, it rarely receives coverage in the news media. World Pneumonia Day aims to help bring this health crisis to the public’s attention and encourages policy makers and grassroots organizers alike to combat the disease. Affordable treatment and prevention options exist against pneumonia.PneumoADIP
/ref> There are effective vaccines against the two most common bacterial causes of deadly pneumonia, ''

Haemophilus influenzae ''Haemophilus influenzae'' (formerly called Pfeiffer's bacillus or ''Bacillus influenzae'') is a Gram-negative, non-motile, coccobacillary, facultatively anaerobic, capnophilic pathogenic bacterium of the family Pasteurellaceae. The bact ...

'' type B and ''

Streptococcus pneumoniae ''Streptococcus pneumoniae'', or pneumococcus, is a Gram-positive, spherical bacteria, alpha-hemolytic (under aerobic conditions) or beta-hemolytic (under anaerobic conditions), aerotolerant anaerobic member of the genus Streptococcus. They ar ...

'', and most common viral cause of pneumonia, ''

Orthomyxoviridae ''Orthomyxoviridae'' (from Greek ὀρθός, ''orthós'' 'straight' + μύξα, ''mýxa'' 'mucus') is a family of negative-sense RNA viruses. It includes seven genera: ''Alphainfluenzavirus'', ''Betainfluenzavirus'', '' Gammainfluenzavirus'', ...

''. A course of

antibiotics An antibiotic is a type of antimicrobial substance active against bacteria. It is the most important type of antibacterial agent for fighting bacterial infections, and antibiotic medications are widely used in the treatment and preventio ...

which costs less than $1(US) is capable of curing the disease if it is started early enough. The Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Pneumonia (GAPP) released by the WHO and UNICEF on World Pneumonia Day, 2009, finds that 1 million children's lives could be saved every year if prevention and treatment interventions for pneumonia were widely introduced in the world's poorest countries. The United Nations

Millennium Development Goals The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were eight international development goals for the year 2015 that had been established following the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in 2000, following the adoption of the United Nations Millenn ...

(MDGs) are eight international development goals that 192 United Nations member states and at least 23 international organizations have agreed to achieve by the year 2015. The fourth of these goals is to reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate.

References

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External links

World Pneumonia Day
Pneumonia November observances

Pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severit ...