UMERKOT, Nov 29: Experts speaking at a district-level advocacy seminar on “Introduction of Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PCV)’ held by the health department on Thursday in Sohria Badshah Complex, Umerkot, said that around 680,000 children below five years suffered from pneumonia in Pakistan and out of them 26,772 children died every year.

They said that according to WHO data, Pakistan ranked number four in the world for the pneumonia prevalence while the number of deaths reported were seventh highest.

This was why, they said, the government had decided to include the PCV in its Expanded Immunisation Programme (EPI) from December.

The in charge of EPI in Umerkot, Dr Fareed Ahmed, said that the previously the health department was vaccinating children against eight diseases while the ninth vaccine, PCV, would be added in the programme from December this year.

He said that pneumonia and meningitis were caused by bacteria, viruses or fungi and if left untreated they could prove to be fatal.

He said that meningitis, which was inflammation of the membrane of brain and spinal cord, could lead to life-long disability in 15 to 20 per cent of the affected children, adding that it could also cause hearing loss, learning disabilities and other physical impairments.

Dr Ahmed said that even with proper treatment of pneumococcal pnemonia, three to 25 per cent of the affected children remained at risk of death while 15 to 35 per cent of those who survived Hib meningitis were left with permanent disabilities.

He said that more than 89 children out of every 1,000 in Pakistan died of pneumonia, adding that around 50 per cent of the deaths in children below five years in Pakistan were caused by pneumonia, diarrhoea and malnutrition.

The senior medical officer of Taluka Hospital Samaro, Dr Shewa Ram, said that PVC could be safely administered with other vaccines such as polio, BCG and measles vaccines.

He explained to the participants in the seminar that the pentavalent and pnumococcal vaccines are always given together. They are given in three doses at a difference of six, 10 and 14 weeks and did not have any serious side effects.

He said that the vaccinators should take care that open vials were discarded after six hours of being opened.

Raj Kumar, an EPI support person in Sindh, said that from 1990 to 2012 there has been a reduction of 2.1 per cent in the number of deaths caused by pneumonia while Nepal has been able to bring the death rate down to 5.7 per cent.

He said that Pakistan needed to reduce child mortality rate by two-thirds by the end of 2015 to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

Mr Kumar said that the prevention and proper treatment of pneumonia could avert a million children’s deaths every year, while with proper treatment alone, 600,000 more can be averted across the world. He said that treating pneumonia in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa would reduce the number of deaths by 85 per cent.