ONE YEAR ON… WHAT PROGRESS HAS BEEN MADE?
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought new challenges and opportunities in our efforts to reduce child pneumonia deaths and strengthen health systems.
Now is the time to take stock.
Pneumonia is the single biggest infectious killer of children, claiming more than 800,000 lives annually. Yet pneumonia remains a neglected disease both nationally and globally.
The Global Forum on Childhood Pneumonia was a major opportunity to ensure that pneumonia is at the forefront of national and global health agendas, galvanize national action and mobilize the donor community to increase awareness of the scale of the pneumonia challenge.
ISGlobal, Save the Children, UNICEF, Every Breath Counts, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, ”la Caixa” Foundation, USAID, Unitaid and Gavi had joined forces to address one of the greatest and gravest health challenges facing children around the world.
As the world’s first conference on childhood pneumonia – which took place on 29-31 January 2020 at CosmoCaixa in Barcelona, Spain – the Global Forum agreed on practical pathways that governments and their partners could take to reduce child pneumonia deaths to the levels required to achieve both the Global Action Plan for Pneumonia and Diarrhoea (GAPPD) target and the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) for child survival.
Participants agreed to strengthen primary health care, increase investments, accelerate multisector action, and fast-track innovations to reduce pneumonia deaths to less than 3 per 1,000 live births by 2025 and under five mortality to less than 25 per 1,000 live births by 2030.
This was not a forum for reflection. It was a call to action to deliver concrete measures with the potential to save hundreds of thousands of children’s lives.
We are convinced that a breakthrough on pneumonia is within reach.