Cost-effective help for child pneumonia

BALTIMORE, June 3 (UPI) -- Improving nutrition, indoor air pollution, immunization and child pneumonia case management will reduce pneumonia deaths in children, U.S. researchers said.

Researchers at The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore found that combining the strategies could reduce total child mortality worldwide by 17 percent and could reduce pneumonia deaths by more than 90 percent.

The most cost-effective interventions were programs to promote better community-based treatment of pneumonia, promotion of exclusive breastfeeding, zinc supplementation and vaccination for Hib and S. pneumoniae, the researchers said.

The burning of solid fuels like wood, for cooking and heating, was found to contribute at least 20 percent to the burden of childhood pneumonia, the study said.

"The interventions we examined already exist, but are not fully implemented in the developing world. In addition, implementation of these interventions do not require a great deal of new infrastructure to carry out," lead author Dr. Louis Niessen of Bloomberg School's Department of International Health said in a statement.

The findings are published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.