As the Covid19 threat winds down with the advent of vaccines (and now the booster shots for it in many cases) for many, it is the end of the pandemic. Unfortunately, Covid is not the only potentially lethal respiratory illness around. The fact that vaccines and treatments are available for the majority of such diseases (thankfully) unfortunately does not mean that these are available to everyone.
Pneumonia is a respiratory disease that is, quite literally, the number one killer of Pakistani children. And this is not a new thing, this has been the case for quite some time now.
The title was given to the disease in 2008 by sources from the NCBI whilst UNICEF warned in 2019 that “One child dies of Pneumonia every 39 seconds” across the globe. What exactly is the scale of this illness, what is its history, and what does it look like?
History and of Pneumonia
Hippocrates described the disease first in 460BCE and the symptoms of the illness have been known for quite a while. One of the biggest causes of Pneumonia, a form of bacterium was identified in 1875 and this led to Pneumonia being termed as a separate infection instead of just a symptom of another disease.
Winter Fever, as this illness was known as, had its mortality rates decline in the 20th century with the discovery of various other bacteria that caused the disease and antibiotics like Penicillin to combat the bacteria.
Unfortunately, the economic burden of the disease is quite high and though the rates are difficult to determine for Pakistan, the US government stated that 20 Billion dollars annually were spent to treat communal Pneumonia in the United States.
What does Pneumonia do?
Exposure to toxins and pollutants combined with weak immune systems can cause Pneumonia causing pathogens to enter and thrive in the lungs of the young and the old alike.
Patients experience high fevers, difficulty breathing, UTIs, mental fog, and as the disease worsens can cause organ failure and death when untreated. The lungs fill up with pus and mucus that are byproducts of the immune response towards the fetid infection and the slow but painful death is very similar to the agony caused by Covid and other respiratory illnesses like SARS.
Impact of the Disease
According to Unicef in the November of 2019, more than 800,000 children under the age of 5 fell to Pneumonia in the year before. Most of the deaths occurred in the first 24 months of a child’s life and a large majority succumbed to the disease within the first 2 months of life.
The forgotten pandemic is rendered an even more tragic issue because Pneumonia is largely a preventable and treatable disease. The figure of child deaths almost doubles those caused by malaria every year. According to Kevin Watkins, Chief Executive of Save the Children: “The pneumonia crisis is a symptom of neglect and indefensible inequalities in access to health care.”
The large majority of Pneumonia deaths happen due to inadequate access to healthcare in developing countries. This is highly unfortunate because the matter does not enter the global mainstream because people in developed countries are not dying from it. Less attention is paid to the illness because it is very much less lethal in richer countries with better healthcare services.
The immense lopsidedness of the problem can be gauged from the fact that almost half the global Pneumonia deaths occur in only five countries. Nigeria leads in the number of deaths followed by our neighbor India and then our own Pakistan comes in with 58,000 deaths.
Children without access to clean water and possessing weaker immune systems due to other infections and thus the issue of Pneumonia is not just limited to vaccines and treatment.
Vaccines for the disease and treatments (including oxygen tanks) are expensive and the vaccines are not included in the mandatory spectrum of vaccines in Pakistan due to the financial constraints in the country.
Conclusion
It is clear that Pneumonia is an easily preventable disease that can be both vaccinated for and treated. Quite literally, it is a disease of the poor as shown by the lopsided statistics placing the highest Pneumonia mortality rates in the poorest of nations.
Access to clean water and better healthcare is absolutely necessary for Pakistan and more attention needs to be diverted towards the disease that only the poor seem to die from.
