PRESS RELEASE – For Immediate Release
The European Institute of Women’s Health Calls on Countries to Generate Action for World Pneumonia Day
12 November 2015
First held in 2009, World Pneumonia Day aimed to eliminate pneumonia, which killed more children each year than AIDS, malaria and measles combined at the time. Annually, approximately three-quarters of pneumonia deaths globally occur in children under the age of five. . In Europe, pneumonia death rates are elevated in children under the age of four and in adults over the age of seventy-five. The highest death rates from pneumonia in the population are in older people over the age of eighty in Western Europe and in infants ages 0 to 6 days in Eastern Europe.
Pneumonia results in high illness rates , hospitalisation and mortality throughout Europe. Prevention through the promotion of vaccination; encouraging healthy behaviours, including smoking cessation; improving diagnosis; and supporting treatment development is key to reducing the rate of this infectious disease among both children and adults.
The European Institute of Women’s Health actively works to improve the health of women and their families across the lifespan. In order to celebrate World Pneumonia Day 2015, the Institute calling on key stakeholders throughout the European Union to work to eliminate pneumonia by implementing evidence-based solutions outlined in the Integrated Global Action Plan for Pneumonia and Diarrhea (GAPPD), which was developed to by WHO and UNICEF in 2013 to reduce the global burden of this preventable infectious disease.
For more information, please contact:
Peggy Maguire, Director General of the European Institute of Women’s Health, +353 86 822 5576, peg@eurohealth.ie
- Or please visit:
European Institute of Women’s Health website - World Pneumonia Day website
- Integrated Global Action Plan for Pneumonia and Diarrhea
- International Vacccine Access Center (IVAC) at John Hopkins University Pneumonia and Diarrhea Progress Report 2014
- GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance website