ATTACK – Indonesia is ranked 7th in the world as the country with the highest burden of pneumonia according to World Health Organization (WHO) data in 2017. The reason is that there are 25,481 under-five deaths due to acute respiratory infections or 17% of all causes of under-five mortality in Indonesia. Pneumonia is the second leading cause of under-five mortality in Indonesia, after preterm delivery (premature) with a prevalence of 15.5%.
Various factors cause pneumonia, such as not having exclusive breastfeeding (54%), low birth weight (10.2%), not fully immunized (42.1%), and air pollution in closed spaces and crowded houses. In 2018, 19,000 (16%) children under five or 2 children under five/hour died from pneumonia.
In 2019, globally, Save the Children launched a pneumonia campaign in children through efforts to increase public awareness about the dangers of pneumonia in Indonesia. STOP Pneumonia is an integrated campaign that targets awareness to change behavior to treat pneumonia in children to the wider community, outreach to stakeholders, social mobilization, and parenting campaigns to strengthen the role of fathers in the family.
“We together with the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection with the support of Pfizer through the Come on Immunization STOP Pneumonia campaign event invite stakeholders and parents to make National Children’s Day 2021 and the declaration of the Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PCV) vaccine by the Ministry of Health in 2021 as a joint effort in preventing child deaths from pneumonia. One of them is by building awareness of the importance of full immunization as a form of saving and survival of children – which is the main right of children. We hope that pneumonia “the silent killer” in children can be reduced in the future,” said CEO of Save the Children Indonesia, Selina Sumbung, Saturday (17/7/2021).
In 2021, as a series of celebrations for National Children’s Day, Save the Children with the support of Pfizer Indonesia held an online campaign “Let’s Immunize STOP Pneumonia”. The campaign activities were carried out simultaneously to launch the song “STOP Pneumonia” which received a muri record as the first song about pneumonia in Indonesia.
As many as 400 people have registered and attended the Minister of Health and Minister of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection. Save the Children also collaborated with Saung Angklung Udjo to be a conductor playing the angklung song “STOP Pneumonia”.
The song “STOP Pneumonia” was created to build our awareness of pneumonia as “the silent killer” or “the forgotten killer”, especially in children and ways to prevent it.
“We are proud to be a part of the STOP Pneumonia campaign organized by Save the Children, and this is in line with our commitment to build a healthier Indonesia. We hope that our involvement in this campaign can make a positive contribution in increasing public awareness of the importance of public understanding about the dangers of pneumonia and how to prevent it by immunizing for optimal child development,” said Pfizer Indonesia Policy & Public Affairs Director, Bambang Chriswanto.
Pneumonia as an acute inflammatory disease of the lungs that fills the lungs with fluid and inflammatory cells is very worrying, especially in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. This condition can cause serious health complications and often lead to death. Not only children, this disease is also often suffered by the elderly and is often realized too late because the initial symptoms are difficult to distinguish from other mild respiratory diseases such as colds and the common cold. As a result, many children with pneumonia do not receive proper care and this has a fatal impact on their health.
(Red)
– .
