Malaria Consortium to present at inaugural Global Forum on Childhood Pneumonia

Malaria Consortium will be presenting this week at the inaugural Global Forum on Childhood Pneumonia, which runs from 29 to 31 January in Barcelona.

The Global Forum aims to ensure that pneumonia – the single biggest infectious killer of children under five, claiming more than 800,000 lives every year – is at the forefront of national and global health agendas, and that governments and donors are galvanised to tackle it.

Malaria Consortium will join more than 300 representatives from organisations including ISGlobal, Save the Children, UNICEF, Every Breath Counts, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, ”la Caixa” Foundation, USAID, Unitaid and Gavi at the conference. More than 45 government representatives are also expected to attend.

Together, the delegates will seek to agree practical pathways that governments and their partners can take to meet the Sustainable Development Goals that affect child survival, and the Global Action Plan for Pneumonia and Diarrhoea target to reduce deaths from pneumonia to fewer than three children per 1,000 live births.

Malaria Consortium’s Research Advisor, Dr Kevin Baker, whose recent work has focused on researching improved pneumonia diagnostic aids, will present at the Global Forum on Thursday 30 January. Dr Baker will be sharing an update on the pneumonia research priorities survey being conducted – using the eDelphi process – by the Every Breath Counts Research Group, which he leads.

There will also be key announcements on: national government commitments to accelerate vaccination coverage by supporting Gavi’s 2020 replenishment; the Nigerian Pneumonia Control Strategy, presented by the Nigerian Minister of Health; a new Unitaid investment to improve access to diagnostic tools in nine countries; and a new UNICEF catalogue, unveiled by UNICEF and WHO.

Find out more about the conference, and watch it live, by following this link.

Find out more about Malaria Consortium’s work on pneumonia here.

Read our advocacy brief on improving pneumonia case management at all levels here.