By Danny Alfred

As Nigeria joins the rest of  the world to mark the World Pneumonia Day, today, multinational pharmaceutical company, GlaxoSmithKline, GSK, has pledged support for the reduction of childhood pneumonia in Nigeria as  its own contribution to the  global effort to reduce death and suffering due to childhood pneumonia.

According to a statement by the company in Lagos, reducing the global burden of pneumonia is essential to reaching the United Nations’ Millennium Goal 4 by 2015 and reducing the number of children under five who die each year by two-thirds, compared to 1990.

He said: “Pneumonia is the leading cause of death in children worldwide, particularly in developing countries. Over 1.5 million children die from pneumonia globally each year; more than AIDS, malaria and measles combined.

“WHO statistics also reveals that India, China, Nigeria, Pakistan and DRC  currently record the highest number of pneumococcal infections and death just as childhood pneumonia has been identified as the leading single cause of death in children aged less than 5 years in the world.

“ Pneumonia, an inflammation of the lungs usually caused by infection, which causes  cough and fever and makes breathing difficult can be tackled with low-cost solutions such as vaccines and antibiotics  that  helps  stop children from  dying and suffering from  the disease.

“However, such vaccines and antibiotics are simply not being deployed on the scale needed to tackle the problem in the Nigeria and other world’s poorest countries.  Hence, protecting children from developing pneumonia is critical to reducing  its burden especially in Nigeria where no fewer than 177,000 children die every year from the disease – the highest in Africa,” the statement further said.