GENEVA, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) on Monday jointly launched a comprehensive action plan to tackle pneumonia, the biggest cause of child deaths in the world.
The plan is expected to save up to 5.3 million children from dying of pneumonia by 2015, the Geneva-based WHO said in a statement.
Pneumonia kills some 1.8 million children under five years of age every year, more than 98 percent of which occur in 68 developing countries. In spite of its huge toll, relatively few resources are dedicated to tackling this child killer, according to the statement.
The global action plan for the prevention and control of pneumonia (GAPP) includes recommendations on what needs to be done, specific goals and targets, and estimates of what it will cost and how many lives will be saved.
The aim of the plan is to increase awareness of pneumonia as a major cause of child deaths, and it calls on global and national policy-makers, donor agencies and civil society to take immediate action to implement the plan.
"This action plan provides the strategy to prevent and control pneumonia, which today kills more children than any other illness," said WHO Director-General Margaret Chan in the statement.
"We know the strategy will work, and if it is applied in every high burden country, we will be able to prevent millions of deaths," Chan said.
The cost of implementing the global plan by scaling up the recommended measures in the 68 high burden countries is estimated at 39 billion U.S. dollars for 2010-2015, according to the statement.
Specific targets and goals to be reached by 2015 under the GAPP strategy are to expand coverage of all relevant vaccines and exclusive breastfeeding rates to 90 percent, and raise the level of access to appropriate pneumonia case management to 90 percent.
This will lead to a reduction in child pneumonia deaths by 65 percent and cutting the number of severe pneumonia cases in children by 25 percent, compared to 2000 levels.
