More than 1 in 5 child deaths in low income countries are due to pneumonia. This death rate could be reduced if all affected children received effective pneumonia treatment (known as "standard case management"), which includes antibiotics and oxygen therapy. The government of Malawi recently introduced a national program for delivering standard case management for pneumonia to children. In this week's PLoS Medicine, Penelope Marjorie Enarson (International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, Child Health Lung Division, Paris, France) and colleagues in Malawi and South Africa describe the development, scale-up, and achievements of this program, which is modeled on a similar program to tackle TB.
Source: Public Library of Science