THE chief of party of the Integrated Sustainable Childhood Pneumonia and Infectious Diseases Reduction (INSPIRING) project, Dr Isah Adamu, has said pneumonia is claiming the lives of 120, 000 children in Nigeria.
The chief of party made the disclosure while fielding questions to newsmen shortly after his address at a workshop organised for journalists on the ‘Role of the Media in Tackling Childhood Pneumonia in Nigeria’ by Save the Children International (SCI) supported by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).
He said there is “an urgent need for collective action on pneumonia reduction as surveys show 120,000 children under five are dying annually of pneumonia in Nigeria.”
He appealed to media practitioners to focus more attention on pneumonia and other infectious diseases that are silently killing thousands of children in the country.
He said the media has a major role to play in transforming public understanding and attitude about pneumonia, how to access available public healthcare services, monitoring and evaluation reports to promote accountability.
Dr Adamu said, “The media is very important and has a great role to play in achieving the aim and objective of the project of reducing pneumonia and diarrhoea among the children in the country.
“Working with the media on this project (INSPIRING) is necessary and not an option as the organisations (SCI, GSK and Media) have a common mission and vision of service to humanity.”
“Pneumonia is a major childhood killer disease that needs collective and urgent attention by stakeholders at all levels.”
The chief of party said the INSPIRING project is now in two states in the country, Lagos and Jigawa States. It is sponsored by Save the Children International and GlaxoSmithKline
It began as a pilot programme in 2018 and has trained hundreds of community volunteers, health workers and other key stakeholders on pneumonia infection, prevention and control.
“Besides the training, we also provide some intervention such as donation of clinical oxygen, Covid-19 protection equipment and other related equipment to health facilities in the two states.
“For years, pneumonia has been killing children without listing among major child killer diseases. To end the scourge of the disease we chose Lagos, being a metropolitan state and Jigawa as a rural state for our pilot intervention, and also to show that the problem can be addressed in all states of the federation”.
On his part, the representative of GlaxoSmithKline Dr Abba Sanni expressed appreciation for the cooperation by the state’s government and media.
Dr Sanni reaffirmed his organisation’s commitment to save lives and those of children in particular.
“Based on this reason we will continue to give our contribution to government and to non-governmental organisations to achieve the objective goal.”
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