If you’ve been following our pneumonia blog series, it’s no news to you that despite being the number one killer of children globally, pneumonia has attracted only a fraction of the funding and attention that other global health issues have garnered. Today’s ONE co-sponsored the first ever World Pneumonia Day summit in New York sought to reverse this trend by rallying stakeholders towards a common goal: preventing 5 million child deaths by 2015 by delivering existing interventions in countries with the highest pneumonia burdens. The summit brought together global health experts and advocates to complement a week of awareness-raising events happening in countries like Nigeria, Bangladesh, Kenya and the Philippines.

The summit coincided with the launch of the Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Pneumonia (GAPP), a report authored by UNICEF and the WHO. The GAPP lays out a roadmap for the world to save 5 million lives over the next 6 years through an integrated strategy of protection, prevention and treatment in 68-high burden countries. Meeting these targets will require an estimated $3.8 billion in 2010 to be scaled up to reach $8 billion by 2015. This comes out to an investment of $12.90 per child each year.

Not surprisingly, the majority of this funding is designated for strengthening health systems in developing countries so that pneumonia cases are identified and treated properly and interventions can reach the people who need them. Although many of the speakers focused on the specific impact of pneumonia and the tools needed to fight it, there was also a strong emphasis on the need to integrate any pneumonia strategy with the fight against other major childhood diseases like diarrhea and malaria, especially at the implementation level.

The role of pneumonia in the broader global health and development agenda was put on the table from the very beginning by the Summit’s opening speakers, Columbia Professor Jeff Sachs and Grammy-winning singer and UNICEF Ambassador Angelique Kidjo. Prof. Sachs opened the summit with a call for the pneumonia community to work with the HIV/AIDS and malaria communities instead of “squabbling’” over which disease is receiving the funding it needs because, as we all know, no disease is truly receiving the global attention and resources it needs to be eradicated. He also pointed to the UN MDG Review Summit in 2010 as a moment for the global development community to come together to hold world leaders accountable for their efforts to achieve the eight goals set out in 2000, especially President Obama who has committed to come to the summit with a global plan to reach the MDGs by 2015 and eradicate global poverty in the years beyond. Ms. Kidjo built on this imperative by speaking about the importance of women’s education in the fight against pneumonia and other childhood diseases by drawing on her own childhood in Benin and her travels as a UNICEF Ambassador throughout Africa, where she said women are key to ending pneumonia and other diseases through their role as mothers and caregivers.

Overall, it was a great morning with some important takeaways and action items for all the groups involved. You can watch the webcast of the event here and read about how you can support the World Pneumonia Day Coalition here.