World Pneumonia Day: Group canvasses increased emphasis on prevention

Tags It Second Largest Killer Of Under-Five Children

With Pneumonia being rated as the second largest killer of children under five, the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria-Partnership for Advocacy in Child and Family Health (PSN-PACFA) has called for the mainstreaming of pneumonia into the National Health Planning.

Programme Director, Strategy PSN-PACFA, Remi Adeseun, stated this during a policy dialogue and press briefing to commemorate the 2016 World Pneumonia Day in Abuja, yesterday.

Adeseun said the disease is responsible for 14 percent of the 854,000 children death out of the approximately 7million under -five children in Nigeria after malaria.

He stressed the need for government to prioritize the scourge, saying that specific budget lines should be created for pneumonia mainstreaming programmes.

The Federal Ministry of Health, he added, must play a leading role starting from the 2017 health budget and increase budget lines for the management of childhood pneumonia

“Government should prioritize childhood pneumonia and recognise that it is the second single biggest killer of children under five years in the country. It should then be mainstreamed alongside targeted interventions aimed at addressing and reducing the scourge of the disease in Nigeria, should be launched across the country, “ he suggested.

While maintaining that existing programmes should be strengthened and expanded so as to effectively address the killer disease, Adeseun said the deaths could be prevented and treated if the disease is prioritized.

He noted that HIV/AIDS is only responsible for three percent under-five deaths, adding that government has to prioritize it more than Pneumonia and Diarrhoea, which are the second and third single killers of children in the country. .