World Pneumonia Day: Know the Facts & Raise Awareness

Did you know that every 20 seconds a child dies from Pneumonia?!  Terribly sad, but true - pneumonia kills over 1.5 million children. It’s the #1 cause of death to children under age five, worldwide– out ranking AIDS, measles, and malaria combined! The good news is that pneumonia is easily preventable via vaccines and treatable via antibiotics. Most of these children’s lives can be saved by bringing attention to this deadly disease.

Since today is "World Pnemonia Day", I wanted to post a little about this terrible disease and alert you all to the facts.

Did You Know?

• Every year, pneumonia kills more children than any other illness worldwide including AIDS, malaria and measles combined?

• There are approximately 155 million worldwide cases of childhood pneumonia every year?

• Pneumonia can be prevented with simple interventions such as vaccines, and treated with low-cost, low-tech medication (ie. antibiotics) – yet less than 20% of children with pneumonia receive the antibiotics they need?

• Prevention and proper treatment of pneumonia could avert one million deaths in children every year. *Please note Vicks is a proud supporter of helping to raise awareness to this deadly disease but Vicks products do not treat pneumonia

• Three quarters of all pneumonia episodes worldwide among children under five occur in just 15 countries.

Vicks together with its partner, Save the Children, are supporting the Global Coalition Against Child Pneumonia to help raise global awareness and understanding of pneumonia

Who says learning can’t be fun? Save the Children and Vicks invite you to check out their online trivia game at www.missionpneumonia.org and know the facts so you can spread awareness about this devastating, but easily preventable issue!

Stay tuned as Vicks will be sponsoring a very cool giveaway here on the blog in the upcoming weeks!!