Nairobi — The World pneumonia day will be celebrated today amid calls from health advocates on leaders to scale up coordination between National and County governments to defeat the disease.
According to the Ministry’s Preventive and Promotive Health Services Director Andrew Mulwa, 9,000 children died in 2018 as a result of pneumonia.
“The world pneumonia day reminds us of the effort the government has put in place to address pneumonia which is a leading killer in under five contributing to deaths of around 9000 under-fives in 2018,” said Mulwa.
He lauded the government’s efforts in mitigating child deaths by putting interventions in place to ensure the improved outcome in under 5 outcomes including the increased uptake of ORS and zinc for management of diarrhoea for children under five years and improved breastfeeding practices by mothers.
“The good news is that a majority of these solutions are low cost but have a high impact that can be practised at every level of care,” he said.
He called for the two levels of governance to pull their resources in a bid to provide better health care for the Kenyan citizens.
Kenya’s World Health Organization representative Martin Chabi has called for all to continue giving the agenda of ending preventable diarrhoea and pneumonia deaths as well as Newborn Health the priority it deserves.
“WHO calls for more coordinated National and County efforts to intensify actions for the control of pneumonia and diarrhoea and to ensure the Universal Access to Quality preventive, promotive and treatment services? We specifically call for attention to the commodity supply chain management, including the supply of Oxygen,” he said
Many factors contribute to pneumonia, and no single intervention can effectively prevent, treat and control it.
Five simple but effective interventions – if implemented properly – will help reduce the burden of the disease that is responsible for almost one-fifth of all child deaths around the world.