Even as global child deaths have declined from 12.6 million to 6.6 million over the last two decades, pneumonia has remained the world’s leading infectious killer among children under the age of 5.
Despite available interventions, pneumonia still claims the lives 104 children every hour — nearly all of them in developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
That’s too many.
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About the author
Keith Klugman
Keith Klugman is director for pneumonia at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he leads efforts to improve the development and delivery of pneumonia vaccines and expand the use of antibiotic treatments and diagnostic tools. An expert on antibiotic resistance in pneumonia pathogens and helped develop the pneumococcal vaccine, Klugman has long academic experience and has also worked for the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.