What is Pneumonia?
- Pneumonia is a medical term used to describe an infection of the lung. It is an acute respiratory infection.
- It can affect either one of the lungs or both of them.
Who is affected by Pneumonia?
- It can affect people of all ages – both adults and children.
- However, there are certain age groups within which it is more common; it is also more serious when it occurs in certain age groups than in others. This is the case especially among the elderly and children – they are more commonly affected and are more likely to develop a more serious infection than other age groups would.
- It doesn’t affect only developing countries, as it is also a public health problem in developed countries like the United States.
How much mortality does this disease cause?
- Of all infectious diseases affecting children, it causes the largest number of deaths in children. And, in general, it is one of the leading causes (both infectious and non-infectious) of death in children.
- Out of every 100 deaths that occur in children under that age of 5 years, about 16 of them are from pneumonia.
- In 2015, 920,136 children died from this infectious disease; most of whom were less than 2 years old.
- And every day, about 2,500 children die from this infectious disease.
- Most of these deaths occur in developing countries.
- Every year, this disease kills approximately one million children who are below 5 years of age.
- In the United States, about one million people seek medical care as a result of pneumonia annually. And about 50,000 people die every year from the disease.
- You should know that pneumonia is an infection that can be prevented.
