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ANKARA
Between 142,000 and 160,000 children under the age of five die of pneumonia in Nigeria each year, according to figures released by the country’s Ministry of Health.
Low immunization, especially in hard-to-reach areas, urbanization, malnutrition and pollution due to forest burning were cited as causes of pneumonia deaths in Nigeria, local newspaper The Guardian reported on Thursday.
The figures were released a day before World Pneumonia Day, marked globally on November 12.
“Everyone can be affected by pneumonia, but mortality is higher when children are malnourished,” said Oluseyi Omokore, an official with the Nigerian Ministry of Health.
He said that more children under the age of five contract malaria, but deaths from pneumonia are even higher.
“Anyone can treat malaria, but the situation is not the same with pneumonia. It affects the lungs and most people don’t know it, ”he told The Guardian.
“It is the leading cause of death for children under the age of five in Nigeria and constitutes 16% of the total number of under-five mortality.”
Severe pneumonia affects more than 22 million young children in low- and middle-income countries each year and kills more people than malaria, measles and diarrhea combined, according to a new analysis cited in the report.
The disease leaves “approximately 4.2 million children under the age of five in Nigeria and 123 other low- and middle-income countries with critically low oxygen levels each year,” according to the UNICEF report, Clinton Health Access Initiative, Save the Children. and Murdoch Children’s Research Institute.
“Disruptions to health services related to the COVID-19 pandemic threaten to be a further blow in the battle against the world’s largest infectious killer of children, which already kills more than 800,000 children under the age of five. years every year, “the report reads.
According to the Stop Pneumonia initiative, the disease remains the “leading cause of infectious death for adults and children, killing 2.5 million, including 672,000 children, in 2019.”
“COVID-19 could add 1.9 million to the death toll this year. This could increase deaths from pneumonia from ‘all causes’ by more than 75 percent, “the group said in a statement included in The Guardian report.
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