Abstract
Pneumonia remains the biggest killer of children, particularly in the least developed countries with the highest child mortality, accounting for over 2 million deaths in those under 5 years of age annually. This is a greater number than deaths due to HIV, tuberculosis and malaria together in this age group. Control of pneumonia mortality is key to achieving the fourth millennium development goal. Even though effective interventions for reducing pneumonia mortality exist, they have not been systematically implemented in most developing countries. The Global Action Plan for Pneumonia prevention and control aims to advocate for a concerted action to control pneumonia mortality through the scaling up of known effective interventions, and proposes a set of strategies to achieve this.
Financial & competing interests disclosure
The authors are staff members of the World Health Organization. They are responsible for the views expressed in this publication and they do not necessarily represent the decisions or the policies of the World Health Organization. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.
No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.
Notes
Taken from Citation[65].