Published August 25, 2009 @ 06:30PM PT

by Leith Greenslade If you were asked, "what is the greatest threat to the world's children?", you might answer malaria, or HIV/AIDS, or war or famine.  But the correct answer is something that would never occur to most people - it is pneumonia. Pneumonia kills more children than anything else - 2 million every year - despite the fact that we have vaccines and antibiotics that can prevent and treat pneumonia.  So you might ask, why are 2 million children dying from a disease that we know how to prevent and treat? One of the reasons is that public awareness about pneumonia as the #1 killer of children is very low because nobody talks about it.  And the 2 million children who die from pneumonia live in developing countries, so here in the United States we don't see the p... Read More

Published August 18, 2009 @ 05:08PM PT

Ever wondered what American teens think about kids on the other side of the world dying from diseases that can be prevented by vaccines - vaccines that can cost as little as a Snickers Bar? Well, we asked them.  We asked the teen Summer campers at New York City's Harlem School of the Arts to tell us what they thought and this is what they said. It will not only move you, but give you great hope that our future is in the hands of young people like the Harlem campers. Xena Badillo Have you ever seen those commercials of babies and kids younger than you and feel your heart start to tear apart? You change the channel and the last thing you see is some man trying his hardest to explain why you should help these kids. And all you do is change the channel. The last pictur... Read More

Published August 02, 2009 @ 07:21PM PT

Pneumonia is the #1 killer of children, killing 2 million children every year - more than AIDS, malaria and measles combined.  Preventing these deaths is an essential part of a successful maternal, newborn and child health strategy.  However, child pneumonia has been overshadowed as a priority on the global health agenda and does not receive the attention or funding that a disease of this size merits. Fortunately, child pneumonia is a solvable problem and we know what we need to do to reduce suffering and save millions of children's lives: Ø Protect children against pneumonia with proper nutrition including exclusive breastfeeding; Ø Prevent pneumonia with new and existing vaccines including routine use of pneumococcal, Hib, measles and pertussis vaccines; and... Read More

Published July 17, 2009 @ 10:20AM PT

Citing urgency, a diverse alliance unites to prevent the leading killer of children worldwide BALTIMORE, MD. (July 1, 2009) – Representatives from 10 major health organizations met today at New York University to coordinate outreach efforts for the first ever World Pneumonia Day on November 2, 2009. The growing coalition, which now encompasses civil society organizations and faith-based groups, is mobilizing millions of people around pneumonia. More than 2 million children die from pneumonia each year, accounting for more than one in five of the 9 million under-5 deaths worldwide. Yet despite its overwhelming death toll, pneumonia is underfunded and rarely mentioned in the news media. Coalition members are planning pneumonia summits around the world and hope to focus government... Read More

Published July 07, 2009 @ 07:09PM PT

By Ailian Gan There are a lot of causes out there that fight for our attention. Think of all the causes you know about, the ones that you personally support. Imagine all the others that exist but remain unknown to you. What would it take for a cause to get on your radar? Last week, I had the opportunity to attend a full day planning session for World Pneumonia Day (Nov 2). In a small lecture room in the semi-basement of the NYU medical campus, I got to be part of a group of 36 people representing 16 different organizations, from UNICEF to the Center for Disease Control to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to the GAVI Alliance. We were there to advance the fight against pneumonia. Pneumonia is the number one killer of children, killing more children than AID... Read More

Published July 03, 2009 @ 04:28PM PT

by Amanda Goldenberg As children we learn that we need to take care of one another. We are taught that we are part of a big world, but we are all connected. Somewhere along the way these lessons are replaced with taglines, such as “life’s not fair.” In order to protect ourselves from harsh realities we lose the genuine empathy we are instilled with as children. I found in GAVI, an organization that allows me to use my ability to affect change to take care of my fellow man. Actually, I am not helping my fellow “man,” but rather children in the poorest countries. The GAVI Alliance is a private-public partnership that provides funds to immunize children in the world’s 72 poorest countries. Every year 2.5 million children die from vaccine preventable d... Read More

Published June 17, 2009 @ 05:47PM PT

Our son Sam was five months old when the invisible and relatively harmless bacteria that he, like hundreds of thousands of kids his age, was carrying in his nose made the rare - and catastrophic - leap to the lining of his brain. We took him to hospital three times before doctors realised the dreadful truth. On the first occasion, after a sleepless night of fever, the doctor was categorical: "It's not meningitis." Two days later we were back in A&E, only to be reassured that we could take him home and continue with the Calpol. The meningitis awareness posters say "trust your instincts". That night in A&E, our instincts screamed. But our heads, befuddled with a lack of sleep and fear, told us: "Trust the doctors." After all, we so desperately wanted them to be right. Twelve ho... Read More

Published June 16, 2009 @ 07:45PM PT

Today, June 16th, is the Day of the African Child. Africa loses more of its children than any other continent. Every year 5 million African children die before reaching their 5th birthdays. 1 in 5 will die within the first weeks of life. Pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, HIV/AIDS and measles will claim millions more. The good news is that we have vaccines that can prevent the deadliest forms of pneumonia and diarrhea. Rwanda and the Gambia are the first developing countries to introduce these vaccines. If the GAVI Alliance can get these vaccines to the rest of Africa, we will be able to stop millions of African children from dying before they reach their 5th birthdays. Not this Day of the African Child.  And not next year's Day of the African Child.  But with you... Read More

Published June 12, 2009 @ 05:25PM PT

1. Take a vaccine that targets the leading vaccine-preventable killer of children - the pneumococcal vaccine - a vaccine that children in the developing world do not get because it is too expensive (US$70 per dose); 2. Sit down with pharmaceutical companies and tell them that if they make a vaccine suitable for developing countries and sell it at a price they can afford, several developed country governments will buy certain amounts of it at the agreed price (US$3.50 over the long term); 3. Sit down with the governments of Italy, the UK, Canada, Russia and Norway and the Gates Foundation and get them to contribute the money required to buy the vaccines (US$1.5 billion); 4. Top it up with $1.3billion from the GAVI Alliance; and 5. Help developing countries apply f... Read More

Published June 08, 2009 @ 06:41PM PT

1. Diarrhea is the most common cause of illness and the 2nd leading cause of child death in the world.  1.4 million children under 5 die every year. 2. 8 out of every 10 children who die from diarrhea live in poor countries.  India is home to the vast majority of these deaths, but Nigeria, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, China, Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Angola are also hotspots. 3.There is a vaccine to prevent the leading cause of severe diarrhea, a bacterium called rotavirus (that's the little monster in the picture). 4. In the 3 years that the rotavirus vaccine has been available in the USA, and with only half of all children immunized, the incidence of the disease has fallen by a mammoth 80 to 90%. 5. If we could get this vaccine to the world&... Read More