A brief guide to pneumonia and other respiratory diseases, and their impact globally and in Bangladesh.

Globally…

Pneumonia, inflammation of the lungs, can be caused by a wide range of bacteria and viruses (and occasionally fungal and parasite infections).

The most common bacterial causes of pneumonia include Streptococcus pneumoniae

(also known as pneumococcus),Haemophilus influenzae and Staphylococcus aureus.

The most common viral causes of pneumonia include influenza viruses, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and parainfluenza viruses; viral infections are particularly common in children.

Pneumonia is an infection of the lower respiratory tract (an LRIor LRTI); these are typically more severe than infections of the upper respiratory tract (URIs or URTIs), such as the common cold, tonsillitis and laryngitis.

Lower respiratory tract infections cause about 2.7 million deaths a year; upper respiratory tract infections are responsible for about 3,000 deaths a year.

Pneumonia is the leading infectious cause of death among children under five years of age, killing 2,500 children a day.

Pneumonia accounts for 16% of deaths of children under the age of five deaths, and killed about 922,000 children in 2015; most deaths were of children under two years of age.

Annual child deaths from pneumonia decreased by 47% from 2000 to 2015, from 1.7 million to 922,000 million.

In Bangladesh…

In Bangladesh, pneumonia is responsible for around 28% of the deaths of children under five years of age.

Around 50,000 children die of pneumonia every year.

An estimated 80,000 children under five years of age are admitted to hospital with virus-associated acute respiratory illness each year; the total number of infections is likely to be much higher.