30 December 2011
Statistics, recently released by the World Health Organisation, WHO, which confirm that pneumonia kills more children than HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis put together, should sound a note of warning to Nigeria and the world as a whole that this major cause of infant mortality, must be tackled frontally in the interest of the present and future generations.
Pneumonia, a respiratory infection, which takes a devastating toll on people in the developing world, according to the WHO report, kills an estimated 1.4 million worldwide, annually, with Nigeria having the second highest prevalence rate, behind India.
For every one child that dies of pneumonia in the developed world, for instance, more than 2, 000 children die of the disease in developing countries. In other words, an estimated 98 per cent of children who die of the disease live in the less developed region of the world.
Among 15 countries with the highest child pneumonia deaths are Afghanistan, Angola, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Kenya, Niger, Pakistan, Tanzania and Uganda. With Nigeria and India, these countries account for nearly 75 per cent of all pneumonia deaths worldwide.
Specifically, an estimated 56 million out of the global 156 million episodes of this lung infection reportedly occurs among Nigerian children annually, with about 177, 000 of these children, mostly under the age of five, losing their lives.
Considering that Nigeria lies within the pneumococcal meningitis belt of Africa where mortality in children and adults has remained high despite the existence of vaccines and medicines that could save millions of lives, one is tempted to believe that the WHO figures may be far too low compared to what the real situation on ground is, especially in the rural areas where most people know little or nothing about the deadly ailment and health care delivery services are literally non existent.
Also unfortunately, though studies have shown that Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccines (PCV) could considerably reduce the burden of the disease, little or nothing has been done to provide these vaccines to checkmate the debilitating ailment.
Indeed, the health ministries, at the federal and state levels, appear to treat the disease with levity. For instance, while some health experts insist that the Federal Government should immediately include the PCV in routine immunisation exercises across the country, the head of the immunisation division of the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency, NPHDA, Dr. Mahmud Mustapha, reportedly recently said that procurement of the vaccines could only be factored into the 2013 immunisation scheme.
According to him, this is because funds for the vaccines are not captured by the 2012 budget, adding that the vaccines were expensive and so, required to be planned for on a long-term basis.
This position, in our view, is a reflection of the high level of insensitivity routinely exhibited by some of those in leadership positions across the country. The fact is that the issue at hand is a crisis that could result in the death of millions of children before 2013 when the official projects that procurement of the required vaccines would be included in the budget. The reaction to such a clear emergency, we believe, should be immediate government action, even if it means virement of funds or a supplementary budget!
It is such lackadaisical attitude to emergencies that have prevented the country from the heights that it should have reached development wise. Otherwise, why should the country wait for one full year before confronting a monster that has the capacity of killing off its present and future generations?
It is bad enough that it took the WHO to make public these disturbing statistics. The challenge before the country’s health managers should be to immediately spring into action with strategies to redress the situation.
Suggesting that the issue can only be addressed in 2013, only goes to confirm that officials of the health ministry had been oblivious of the great danger posed by this disease or worse.
These officials may also be unaware of the fact that they must from now begin to make concrete plans for a massive campaign against this disease, starting from a domestic survey to identify the pattern of its occurrence in the country so as to know where to concentrate efforts aimed at prevention and treatment of the disease.
Vaccines and necessary medicines must also be made available in all health facilities across the country and be given to children under the age of five at no cost.
Since pneumonia has, going by the WHO statistics, become pervasive and lethal, it stands to reason that non-governmental organisations, NGOs, should take more interest in the fight against it, rather than only scrambling to be part of the campaign against diseases such as HIV/AIDS, cancer and malaria, that have become ‘glamorous’ on account of the huge foreign grants they attract.
Government, in collaboration with all stakeholders, must, very importantly, also mount public enlightenment programmes, to educate parents on the dangers of pneumonia and how to prevent, recognise and treat it.
People must be taught, for instance, that while most healthy children can fight the infection with their natural defences, children whose immune systems are compromised are more likely to develop pneumonia and die of it.
It must, likewise be stressed that since a child’s immune system may be weakened by malnutrition or undernourishment, especially in infants who are not exclusively breastfed, mothers must, to avoid pneumonia, exclusively breastfeed their babies in the first six months of life.
Other essential tips include proper nutrition for older children, proper sanitation and reduction of indoor air pollution from cooking stoves and tobacco smoke.
That pneumonia, which is among the most solvable problems in global health, has remained the leading infectious killer of young children in the world, especially in Nigeria with all its natural resources, is really painful and, indeed, totally unacceptable.
AllAfrica – All the Time