Call to Action on World Pneumonia Day

This month, on November 12, the world will recognize the fourth annual World Pneumonia Day. First launched in 2009 by a coalition of global health leaders (1), World Pneumonia Day aims to raise awareness about pneumonia's toll on the world's children and to promote interventions to protect against, treat, and prevent the disease. Pneumonia continues to be the leading killer of young children around the world, causing ≈14% of all deaths in children 1 month to 5 years of age (2). It is a critical disease for countries to conquer in order to reach Millennium Development Goal 4: reducing the child mortality rate by two thirds from 1990 to 2015 (3). Most children who die from pneumonia live in developing countries, where such factors as malnutrition, crowding, and lack of access to quality health care increase the risk for death. Pneumonia kills few children in industrialized countries, although it remains among the top 10 causes of deaths in the United States, for example, because of deaths in older adults (4).