Pneumonia kills more children under five than any other infectious disease

Pneumonia is a common illness, occurs in all age groups, and is a leading cause of death in children across the developing world. Pneumonia is an acute respiratory disease in which fluid fills the lungs, hindering oxygen from reaching the bloodstream.

The global disease burden

More than two million children a year die from pneumonia—one in five of the childhood deaths under age five. Even this estimate may be low in that it does not include pneumonia deaths of newborns. Were neonatal deaths included, pneumonia could account for up to three million deaths per year—as many as one third of under-five deaths each year. Only about half of children sick with pneumonia receive appropriate medical care and fewer than 20 percent of children with pneumonia received the recommended treatment of antibiotics.

The main cause of pneumonia is pneumococcus or Streptococcus pneumoniae. More than 90 percent of pneumococcal pneumonia deaths in children occur in developing countries. Pneumococcus also causes sepsis (an overwhelming infection of the bloodstream) and meningitis (an infection of the fluid surrounding the spinal cord and brain), which kill and disable children worldwide. Although treatable, in developing countries bacterial meningitis kills or disables more than half the children who become sick with the disease. In addition, pneumococcus is among the most common bacterial causes of disease among HIV-infected individuals and the most common cause of middle ear infections (otitis media).

Treatments to reduce pneumococcal disease and deaths are available but reach far too few children. Moreover, antibiotic-resistant pneumococcus is becoming more common worldwide, making prevention of the disease, through widespread use of pneumococcal vaccines, even more critical.

Prevention through vaccines

In September 2006, the World Health Organization and UNICEF released a report, Pneumonia: The Forgotten Killer of Children, underscoring the enormous toll of pneumonia worldwide and the need to improve access to treatment and vaccines. Read the report on the UNICEF website.

Since 2000, when US infants began receiving routine vaccination against pneumococcal disease, the country has nearly eliminated childhood pneumococcal disease caused by the strains included in the vaccine. That vaccine—a conjugate vaccine that includes the seven serotypes most common in the United States—is currently the only pneumococcal vaccine licensed for use in infants and young children. While this could provide protection to children in the developing world in the near term, additional vaccines are urgently needed to broaden the strain coverage and increase the vaccine availability to children in low-income countries.