By Sola OGUNDIPE

As its own contribution towards the reduction of the spate of deaths from childhood pneumonia in  Nigeria, multinational pharmaceutical company, GlaxoSmithKline, GSK has  pledged support for  Nigeria’s efforts.

A statement issued on World Pneumonia day  by the company in Lagos, noted that over 1.5 million children die from pneumonia globally each year with Nigeria, along with India, China,  Pakistan & DRC  currently recording the highest number of pneumococcal infections and death in the world.

Noting that childhood pneumonia has been identified as the leading single cause of death in children aged less than 5 years, the statement said  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.

It recognised that pneumonia can be tackled with low-cost solutions such as vaccines and antibiotics  that  helps  stop children from  dying and suffering from  the disease, but regretted that  such vaccines and antibiotics are simply not being deployed on the scale needed to tackle the problem in Nigeria and other poor countries.