Health experts on Wednesday said that around 14% of children die due to pneumonia in Pakistan. They were addressing the launching of research Breathing for Tomorrow; Exhibiting Advances in Respiratory Health with Focus on Under Five Pneumonia.
They said that Pneumonia continues to be one of the leading killers of children under five globally, with one child dying of the disease every 30 seconds.
District Health Officer (DHO) Islamabad, Dr Zaeem Zia said that doctors had an important role to play in strengthening the health care system.
He said that doctors should follow medical ethics in hospitals to properly serve the patients. Director Research, Neoventive Solutions, Dr. Hana Mahmood said that with over a decade of experience conducting high quality research in childhood pneumonia, Neoventive Solutions is helping to address this issue as part of the NIHR Global Health Research Unit on Respiratory Health (RESPIRE).
She said that Neoventive Solutions in collaboration with the Ministry of National Health Services and with support of International Research Force conducted research in Pakistan to generate evidence at three levels of the healthcare system.
She said that at the community level, our researchers explored the perceptions of caregivers on pneumonia and the related requirement for care-seeking which showed that there was limited knowledge on under five pneumonia with delayed care seeking. This was followed by an investigation on the use of mobile health technology to aid the community in prevention of pneumonia through Lady Health Workers (LHW).
Other health experts said that although it was a long-standing issue, pneumonia remains neglected at across the country. They said that it was imperative that a high-quality evidence base, providing sustainable, scalable solutions, was generated in order to attract policy level attention and in turn decrease the burden of disease.
