Since the 1990s a one minute timer has been provided by UNICEF to Community Health Workers to assist manual counting of breaths. Recent research has identified a need to improve this tool and also look for other options to support community health workers in the diagnosis of pneumonia in children under five in resource poor settings. In early 2013 a workshop in Copenhagen identified 10 characteristics which taken together indicate a preference for an automatic device not dependent on manual response. There have been many suggestions for new automatic devices of varying complexity. Most of them can be eliminated on the basis of one or more of the Copenhagen characteristics and the technical criteria. Following on from the initial landscape analysis done as part of the Malaria Consortium project “Improved tools for the measurement of respiratory rate and oxygen saturation for the diagnosis of pneumonia”.
Keywords: Community delivery | Research | Use of evidence | Pneumonia | Diagnosis
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