India tops in global pneumonia deaths of children under five years of age with 3.97 lakh reported in 2010, says a UNICEF study.
The third annual International Vaccine Access Center's (IVAC) Pneumonia
Progress Report 2012 says that almost 1,088 children under 5 years of
age die everyday in India, an increase of 6.7 per cent from 2008 IVAC
data which pegged the deaths at 3.71 lakh annually.
Recent estimates from the United Nations
Children's Fund (UNICEF) show that pneumonia continues to be the number
one killer of children around the world - causing 18 per cent of all
child mortality, an estimated 1.3 million child deaths in 2011 alone.
The Pneumonia Progress Report, 2012, released by IVAC and John Hopkins Bloomberg
School of Public Health, says none of the 15 countries with high
mortality due to pneumonia have reached the 90 per cent of WHO and
Unicef's Global Action Plan for Prevention & Control of Pneumonia
(GAPP) target for each intervention.
The report says India and
Nigeria, the two large countries with highest numbers of child deaths
worldwide, remain low scorers with an average intervention coverage rate
of 55 per cent and 40 per cent, respectively.
The latest
estimates on pneumonia mortality come in the wake of accelerated efforts
to achieve the the Millennium Development Goal 4 of reducing under five
child mortality by two thirds between 1990 and 2015 and gives a warning
to India to speed up its vaccination efforts to prevent child deaths.
The report says that while India has made considerable stride in
introducing hib vaccine in a few states, it still has much to do to
strengthen its comprehensive approach to fighting pneumonia, including
introduction of a pneumococcal conjugate vaccine as previously
recommended by NTAGI in at least one state.
Bangladesh and Tanzania,
formerly 12th and 14th in childhood pneumonia deaths, are no longer in
the top 15, worldwide, and are replaced by Mali and the aggregated Sudan
and South Sudan, the report adds.
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