UN/World Pneumonia Day - 2011.Pneumonia & respiratory illness is world's biggest killer of children. The UN's WHO and GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines & Immunization have at forefront of battle by delivering vaccines and related health care.

Dr. Shamim Qazi from the World Health Organization’s Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health said that the single cause of death among 7.6 million children under the age of five that die every year is pneumonia.

According to the Lancet Medical Journal latest report (11 November) children treated at home for severe pneumonia were more likely to recover than children referred to health facilities. Dr. Qazi said that those children who were treated by the community workers at home did twice as better compared with the ones who were referred.

He stressed that in that sense there was a “double benefit because these children got treated early and they got treated with the proper medicines.”

The World Pneumonia Day seeks to raise awareness of pneumonia as a public health issue and help prevent the millions of avoidable child deaths from pneumonia that occur each year.