Report: Treatable Diseases Kill Millions Of Youths

Medical digest - Pneumonia

December 17, 1992

Pneumonia is now the biggest killer of children in the modern world, resulting in 3.6 million deaths annually, but in most cases the cure is a five-day course of antibiotics that costs only 25 cents, according to a U.N. report released Thursday.

The means of stopping pneumonia and dozens of other childhood diseases are now ''available and affordable,'' the report said, but countries are not making the necessary investments in basic medical care, sanitation and education.

''The present neglect,'' the report said, ''is a scandal of which the public is largely unaware.''

Each week, the report found, a quarter of a million children die of malnutrition and diseases that are either curable or preventable.

''No famine, no flood, no earthquake, no war has ever claimed the lives of 250,00 children in a single week,'' said James P. Grant, executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund. ''Yet malnutrition and disease claim that number of child victims every week.''

To bring an end to the ''age-old evils'' of disease, malnutrition and illiteracy and to save as many as 4 million young lives a year would require an extra investment of $25 billion a year - which is less than Americans spend on beer and half what Europeans spend a year on cigarettes, the report said.

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