Posts Tagged ‘World Pneumonia Day’

World Pneumonia Day 2010

November 12th, 2010

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMXp5RKton0

By Sofia Redford and Jacqui Mills

It’s not often these days that we have the opportunity to be out on the street advocating for the causes for which we work.  High level meetings and international conference calls, yes—but getting out to talk with people during Washington, DC’s morning rush hour, no.   As part of this year’s World Pneumonia Day (WPD) efforts, we volunteered with one of the many organizations holding WPD events around the world.  Here in DC, one WPD effort involved raising awareness at metro transit stations throughout the nation’s capital.  We gathered at 6:45AM to meet with other volunteers before heading out in smaller teams, composed of a WPD expert, blue spandex-clad PneumoniaFighters!, and volunteers.

Our task today was to raise awareness that pneumonia is the #1 killer of children under 5.  We were surprised to find that very few people knew about the heavy burden caused by this disease.  Most people that we talked to were surprised, one joked “I thought only old people like me got that,” while others shared personal stories.  At one metro stop a Turkish woman shared that her older sister had died due to pneumonia.  This woman was born a year after her sister’s death and was given the same name as her late sister.  Many others commented that a family member or they themselves have had pneumonia. » Read more: World Pneumonia Day 2010

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Looking Back on a Week Dedicated to Maternal Child Health

November 6th, 2009

This morning in the Capitol, a number of us from the Global Network and Sabin Vaccine Institute participated in a breakfast reception capping off a week’s worth of events around World Pneumonia Day.  The speakers themselves were thoughtful, engaging, and succinct (a beautiful thing in this city).  Senator Bill Frist, involved through his work with Save the Children and Hope Through Healing Hands, spoke about the need for public private partnerships around pneumonia and other maternal child health interventions; he also urged the community to keep pushing bills like S.1966, the Global Child Survival Act of 2009, for co-sponsors and ‘teachable moments’ with staff around the issues.  Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, whose resolution recognizing World Pneumonia Day passed this week, was also on hand to advocate for continued pneumonia awareness, urging advocates to ‘be the conscience’ for Representatives on maternal child health.  Finally, Dr. Orin Levine–a leading pneumonia advocate and member of PACE–spoke movingly about how appalling it is to have pneumonia kill so many children each year when known solutions are cheap and available.

But as I sat there drinking my coffee, I was struck by two thoughts tertiary to the event itself:

  • The Mansfield Room, in which the reception was held, is like many rooms in the Capitol in that its appearance conveys a sense of grandeur and gravitas.  To be in that room discussing maternal child health issues signaled to me that we have come a long way in bringing these issues to the fore as important, urgent matters for key policymakers
  • At the Global Network, it is easy to fall into an NTD-focused mindset. Yet an event like today’s, focused primarily on pneumonia, was remarkably relevant to the work we are doing around maternal child health as a broader platform.  Even the messaging–”cheap interventions, proven solutions, a need for partnership to deliver treatments in the field…”–echoed the messages we recite daily with respect to NTDs.  As we move forward with our policy and advocacy work, it serves both the NTD and the broad MCH communities well to exploit such overlap to the benefit of millions of mothers and children around the world.

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World Pneumonia Day 2009

November 2nd, 2009

Did you know that pneumonia is the leading killer of children under the age of five? The infection kills one child every 15 seconds.

Although it’s not a neglected tropical disease, the deadly impact that pneumonia wreaks on individuals around the world—particularly children under the age of five—is neglected and unknown by many.

WPDAnd that’s why today, November 2, marks the first annual World Pneumonia Day created to mobilize efforts to fight a neglected disease that kills more than 4 million people each year and claims the lives of more children under the age of five than AIDS, malaria, and measles combined.

You can help Sabin Vaccine Institute’s Pneumococcal Awareness Council of Experts (PACE)—a coalition of global experts working to raise awareness about pneumococcal disease, a leading cause of pneumonia—put a spotlight on this preventable infection by educating yourself, family and friends about pneumonia; signing the pledge to fight the disease; and participating in a World Pneumonia Day event.

Armed with knowledge, we can utilize the readily available tools to treat and prevent pneumonia, and protect children from ever contracting the infection.

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The Global Network and PACE are initiatives of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, whose mission is to reduce needless human suffering from infectious and neglected tropical diseases.

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