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About 143,000 children under 5 die each year of pneumonia in Nigeria, or one child every twenty seconds, said the Nigerian Ministry of Health, also concerned about the worsening of the Covid-19 epidemic – these figures are already a lot “dark“.
Pneumonia is “the leading cause of death for children under five in Nigeria, with an infant mortality rate of 132 deaths per 1,000 births“, the highest rate in the world, Dr Olorunnimbe Mamora, Secretary of State for Health, unveiled Thursday on the occasion of World Pneumonia Day.
►►► Read also: Coronavirus: pandemics in sight, WHO member states decide to prepare better
The Nigerian Association of Pediatricians has invited the government, international institutions and private partners to “improve health indices“so that the most populous country in Africa, with 200 million inhabitants,”no longer holds the infamous record for the largest number of deaths of children under 5 in the world“.
“This year 2020 is particularly noteworthy due to the Covid-19 pandemic […] has stopped efforts to prevent and treat children, including access to vaccines but also to food or treatment of classic diseases“, the Nigerian Association of Pediatricians warned in a statement released Wednesday.
Pneumonia is the leading cause of death of children in the world with 2,000 deaths a day, in the face of malaria, measles and diarrheal diseases, according to Unicef, which however notes that “medical oxygen associated with antibiotics could save countless lives“.
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