Global burden of childhood pneumonia and diarrhoea
Christa L. Fischer Walkera, Igor Rudanb, Li Liua, Harish Nairb c, Evropi Τheodoratoub, Zulfiqar Ahmed Bhuttad e, Katherine L. O’Briena, Harry J. Campbellb, Robert E. Blacka f✉
- aDepartment of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA
- bCentre for Population Health Sciences and Global Health Academy, University of Edinburgh Medical School, Edinburgh, UK
- cPublic Health Foundation of India, New Delhi, India
- dAga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan
- eAga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistán
- fDepartment of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA. Electronic address: rblack@jhsph.edu
- ✉Corresponding author
Papers open inside SciRah from the original publisher or repository; SciRah never hosts them.
Abstract
Diarrhoea and pneumonia are the leading infectious causes of childhood morbidity and mortality. We comprehensively reviewed the epidemiology of childhood diarrhoea and pneumonia in 2010–11 to inform the planning of integrated control programmes for both illnesses. We estimated that, in 2010, there were 1·731 billion episodes of diarrhoea (36 million of which progressed to severe episodes) and 120 million episodes of pneumonia (14 million of which progressed to severe episodes) in children younger than 5 years. We estimated that, in 2011, 700 000 episodes of diarrhoea and 1·3 million of pneumonia led to death. A high proportion of deaths occurs in the first 2 years of life in both diseases—72% for diarrhoea and 81% for pneumonia. The epidemiology of childhood diarrhoea and that of pneumonia overlap, which might be partly because of shared risk factors, such as undernutrition, suboptimum breastfeeding, and zinc deficiency. Rotavirus is the most common cause of vaccine-preventable severe diarrhoea (associated with 28% of cases), and Streptococcus pneumoniae (18·3%) of vaccine-preventable severe pneumonia. Morbidity and mortality from childhood pneumonia and diarrhoea are falling, but action is needed globally and at country level to accelerate the reduction.
TL;DRThe epidemiology of childhood diarrhoea and that of pneumonia overlap, which might be partly because of shared risk factors, such as undernutrition, suboptimum breastfeeding, and zinc deficiency, and action is needed globally and at country level to accelerate the reduction. (Semantic Scholar)