Ms. Marcette Buttigieg
Let us spread our knowledge about pneumonia, for more effective prevention and early treatment so that lives may not be lost to this common, and often ignored, disease.
The first celebration of World Pneumonia Day took place in 2009 to strengthen the fight against pneumonia, a serious illness that rarely gets attention.
Pneumonia is a preventable and treatable disease which, in 2009, affected 155 million children under five years of age, and of whom 1.2 million children died. It is the highest cause of deaths in small children, exceeding the deaths from malaria, AIDS and measles put together. Sadly, India is responsible for 20% of deaths caused by pneumonia worldwide. Since 2009, through celebration of World Pneumonia Day and related activities to spread knowledge and make treatment available, the number of children’s deaths has now been reduced to 800,000 annually.
Pneumonia is an infection of the lungs and can be caused by bacteria or fungi which reach the lungs through the air we breathe. It affects children and adults and often starts as an infection in the upper respiratory tract; the infection travels further down into the lungs, and then, especially if untreated, the infectious organisms will invade the alveoli, the bubble-like part of the lungs where oxygen is taken up into the bloodstream.
A person suffering from pneumonia, whether child or adult, will have breathing difficulty, evident as rapid, shallow breathing, together with high fever and weakness: when the body cannot get enough oxygen it cannot carry out its functions. And if untreated, or when the disease advances, it often leads to death. Factors that increase the risk of getting pneumonia, and of dying from it, include malnutrition, exposure to harmful gases such as those from a coal oven and polluted air. Those who have ongoing medical conditions such as asthma, heart disease and AIDS, and those who smoke: children under five and older people over 65 are more at risk.
One in three deaths in India is caused by pneumonia, with 200,000 children under five dying annually from it. The sad aspect of all these deaths is that pneumonia is both preventable and treatable – if the diagnosis is made early enough. Treatment consists of antibiotics and need not be expensive, with Amoxicillin being the medicine of choice, especially for children. This is a widely available and cheap antibiotic, yet, it is estimated that only one third of the children who need it actually get treatment.
Most deaths from pneumonias can be prevented through early diagnosis: more people have to become aware that a chest infection can become serious and even fatal. When a person with fever and cough and cold starts having chest pain and difficulty in breathing, it is essential to go to a reliable doctor to be examined and diagnosed. Usually, a chest X-ray and some basic blood tests are enough to diagnose the disease and appropriate treatment can be started in time. Unfortunately, the tendency in rural areas is to use locally available medicines when someone gets sick and wait and hope for the best. Only when the person gets seriously sick, unable to eat and move around, do people go to professional doctors – and by then, in the case of pneumonia, it may be too late.
Let us therefore spread our knowledge about pneumonia, for more effective prevention and early treatment so that lives may not be lost to this common, and often ignored, disease.