The United Nations Children\u2019s Education Fund (UNICEF), says two million children will die of pneumonia in Nigeria in the next 10 years.
\nA statement by the Communication, Advocacy and Partnership Specialist in UNICEF, Malam Rabiu Musa, said that malnutrition, air pollution and lack of access to vaccines and antibiotics were among the drivers of preventable deaths from pneumonia, which killed a child every three minutes in the country.
\nThe statement explained, \u201cPneumonia is caused by bacteria, viruses or fungi, and leaves children fighting for breath as their lungs fill with pus and fluid.
\n\u201cThe disease is the leading killer of children in Nigeria, causing 19 per cent of under-five deaths, which can be prevented with vaccines, and easily treated with low-cost antibiotics.
\n\u201cHowever, more than 40 per cent of one-year-olds in Nigeria are unvaccinated, and three in four children suffering from pneumonia symptoms do not get access to medical treatment.\u201d
\nUNICEF described the expected two million deaths as \u201cdisturbing\u201d, being the highest trend over any country in the world and representing more than 20 per cent of childhood deaths from pneumonia globally.
\nAccording to the organisation, boosting efforts to fight pneumonia could avert over two million child deaths from pneumonia and other major diseases in Nigeria.
\nUNICEF further explained, \u201cAn estimated 809,000 of these deaths would be averted by significantly scaling up services to prevent and treat pneumonia.
\n\u201cResearchers also found that boosting pneumonia services will create an additional \u2018ripple effect\u2019, preventing 1.2 million extra child deaths from other major childhood diseases at the same time.
\n\u201cInterventions like improving nutrition, increasing vaccine coverage or boosting breastfeeding rates are key measures that reduce the risk of children dying from pneumonia.
\n\u201cIt will also stop thousands of child deaths from diseases like diarrhea that kills 580,000 children, meningitis 68,000, measles 55,000 and malaria 4,000 children.\u201d
\nIt observed that by 2030, that effect would be so large that pneumonia interventions alone would avert over two million under-five child deaths in Nigeria from all causes combined.
\nIt said, \u201cWe have a responsibility to do all we can to avert these deaths by pneumonia that could be prevented with concerted action by all players.
\n\u201cThe announcement by the Nigerian government of the world\u2019s first-ever pneumonia control strategy, coupled with the global focus on combating pneumonia, is a huge step forward.
\n\u201cWe now need to follow this with concrete action on the ground to address the causes and drivers of childhood pneumonia deaths in this country.\u201d
\nThe organisation explained that nine leading health and children\u2019s organisations are hosting world leaders at the Global Forum on Childhood Pneumonia, holding from January 29 to 31 in Barcelona.
\nThis is the first international conference on childhood pneumonia.
\nThe organisations include IS Global, Save the Children, UNICEF, Every Breath Counts, \u201cla Caixa\u201d Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID, Unitaid and Gavi, and the Vaccine Alliance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United Nations Children\u2019s Education Fund (UNICEF), says two million children will die of pneumonia in Nigeria in the next 10 years. A statement by the Communication, Advocacy and Partnership Specialist in UNICEF, Malam Rabiu Musa, said that malnutrition, air pollution and lack of access to vaccines and antibiotics were among the drivers of preventable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":205963,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=226245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226245\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/205963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=226245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=226245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=226245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}