Panaji: While the Covid-19 has claimed millions of life since its outbreak last year, pneumonia, a prexisting disease, has been claiming millions of life everyday over the years.
“Pneumonia is one of the neglected diseases despite it is the world’s leading infectious killer of children, claiming one child every 39 seconds. It has been seen that early signs of a lung infection or inflammation are often being ignored,” renowned oncologist Dr Shekar Salkar informed.
Attributing the spread of the infection among children to smoking Dr Salkar said, “Smoking near children is leading cause of rising cases of pneumonia mortality in kids around the world. Pneumonia alone killed more than 8 lakh children in 2017, accounting for 15% of all deaths of children under 5 years old.”
Emphasising that awareness should be created, Dr Salkar said, “we need to strengthen the oxygen services across all our medical facilities. This year, the pneumonia death is expected to rise due to the disruption of medical services in many areas due to Covid 19.”
