Hope for Bangladesh to fight against Pneumonia
Parliamentarians speak on combating deadly Pneumonia through vaccination
The global and country level monitoring to step up maternal and child survival rate is crucially needed to achieve Millennium Development Goal 4 (MDG 4) that calls for a two-thirds reduction in the mortality rate among children under the age of 5 years between 1990 and 2015.
Generating accurate estimates of under-5 mortality poses a considerable challenge because of the limited data available for many developing countries. In response, experts at UNICEF, WHO, the World Bank, the UN Population Division (UNPD) and members of the academic community formed the Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (IGME). The IGME aims to source and share data on child mortality, to improve and harmonise estimation methods across partners, and to produce consistent estimates on the levels and trends in child mortality worldwide.
Since 1990, the global under-5 mortality rate has declined by 28 percent from 90 deaths per 1000 live births to 65 in 2008. The total number of under-5 deaths in the world has declined from 125 million in 1990 to 88 million in 2008.
South Asia has the next highest rate of mortality in children under 5 in the world. About one out of 13 children (76 per 1000 livebirths) died in 2008. South Asia now accounts for 32 percent of the world's under-5 deaths in 2008.
There is an urgent need for the global health community to refocus on pneumonia and diarrhoea as two of the three most important causes of under-5 mortality; new tools, such as vaccines against pneumococcal pneumonia and rotaviral diarrhoea, might provide much needed momentum and an entry point for the revitalisation of comprehensive programming against these two diseases.
Accelerated progress can be achieved, even in the poorest environments, through: integrated, evidence-driven, and community-based programmes that focus on addressing the major causes of death, including pneumonia, diarrhoea, newborn disorders, malaria, HIV, and under-nutrition; reaching the unreached with a basic package of interventions at large scale and achieving coverage with equity; and using data for action and advocacy.
The global burden of disease caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae and Haemophilus influenzae type b in children younger than 5 years has been revealed recently in the medical journal The Lancet.
It is a matter of great joy that the parliamentarians of the People's Republic of Bangladesh have started talking in the house about the introduction of pneumococcal vaccine in Bangladesh through the Advance Market Commitments. Recently Mr Saber Hossian Chowdhury, MP has submitted a notice in the parliament and the Honourable Minister of Health and Family Welfare participated in the discussion in response to his notice.
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