Nicholas Kristof from the New York Times has written a blog entry about pneumonia being under recognized on the global health agenda, in the media and by people in industrialized countries. Many people don't know that pneumonia kills more children than malaria, measles and AIDS combined:
It's been remarkable to watch how malaria has become, over the last five years, a "cool" disease. After decades in which it received little funding or attention (that's partly our fault in the media), malaria is now a major cause, with funding pouring into everything from bednets to vaccines to research into genetic tinkering with mosquitoes so that they can't infect people with malaria. The upshot is going to be huge numbers of lives saved.
One of those active in the malaria campaign is Lance Laifer, and he's now plotting a new effort to take on pneumonia. Respiratory tract infections are a huge problem in the developing world and kill vast numbers of kids, and so some attention could make a huge difference. More power to him and others trying to focus on pneumonia...
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The World Pneumonia Day is on November 2. You can join the Facebook group to stay in the loop and receive information until then.
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Hi Bora, thanks so much for spreading the word!! Nick Kristof's post now has 186 comments, now showing how the science and health community care deeply about this issue. Now we also have a spanking new site up at www.worldpneumoniaday.org.