World Pneumonia Day

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mikeh
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World Pneumonia Day

Post by mikeh » Tue Nov 12, 2019 9:38 am

That's today, 12 November,

A good place to learn more about pneumonia (the leading infectious killer of children globally) is to see the Every Breath Counts coalition website. You can see the excellent The Missing Piece report, which highlights how over 2 million people a year die of pneumonia.
https://stoppneumonia.org/2018-wpd-part ... ing-piece/

And in addition, see this years all-female list of inspirational 'Pneumonia Fighters' - http://justactions.org/campaign/pneumoniafighters/

It's not just a poor-country thing either (though the burden is vast in lower-income nations), see today's news about pneumonia in the UK https://www.theguardian.com/society/201 ... SApp_Other

If interested, see social media hashtags #StopPneumonia #everybreathcounts , and twitter account @Stop_Pneumonia .

For the very short-of-things-to-do, you can even see stuff I've written, which includes an analysis of global funding for infectious disease research showing pneumonia is desperately under-funded, https://figshare.com/articles/Sizing_Up ... nt/6143060
And also a more accessible (in theory) blog posted on the Royal Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene website last year, https://rstmh.org/blog/2018/nov/12/focu ... -pneumonia

(Edited to add link)

minusnine
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Re: World Pneumonia Day

Post by minusnine » Tue Nov 12, 2019 9:51 am

I'm sure this isn't the place for medical anecdotes, but I did come uncomfortably close to adding to the pneumonia death rate myself earlier this year - a week in intensive care and blood oxygen down in the low 70s for a while, before being stuck in a diver's helmet and pumped full of the stuff - so thanks for the heads-up, I will read, contribute, and post links to my 3 twitter followers.

mikeh
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Re: World Pneumonia Day

Post by mikeh » Tue Nov 12, 2019 9:59 am

minusnine wrote:
Tue Nov 12, 2019 9:51 am
I'm sure this isn't the place for medical anecdotes, but I did come uncomfortably close to adding to the pneumonia death rate myself earlier this year - a week in intensive care and blood oxygen down in the low 70s for a while, before being stuck in a diver's helmet and pumped full of the stuff - so thanks for the heads-up, I will read, contribute, and post links to my 3 twitter followers.
Well, I'd argue that adds some context to the thread, rather than just us academics pontificating about things. Pneumonia is seriously unpleasant, as you've described. Hope you are fully recovered now!

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Re: World Pneumonia Day

Post by Chris Preston » Tue Nov 12, 2019 10:03 am

Pneumonia, the old person's friend. As my grandmother used to say.

At first I thought this thread must be about how to get pneumonia. :shock:

In all seriousness, pneumonia is often the ultimate cause of death for children with other infections. Preventing vaccine preventable diseases by ensuring vaccine uptake is at the appropriate levels is one way of protecting children from pneumonia.
Here grows much rhubarb.

minusnine
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Re: World Pneumonia Day

Post by minusnine » Tue Nov 12, 2019 10:17 am

Well I'm just the perfect poster child then - a pontificating academic who got pserious pneumonia!
All recovered now thanks, though it took 3 months to get back to work and I'm still driving to work instead of cycling

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Ben B
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Re: World Pneumonia Day

Post by Ben B » Tue Nov 12, 2019 12:07 pm

Apposite.
Childhood pneumonia cases up 50% in 10 years, NHS data shows

Looks like strong correlation with deprived areas. More austerity victims.
The first ten million years were the worst.
And the second ten million, they were the worst too.

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mediocrity511
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Re: World Pneumonia Day

Post by mediocrity511 » Tue Nov 12, 2019 3:13 pm

Ben B wrote:
Tue Nov 12, 2019 12:07 pm
Apposite.
Childhood pneumonia cases up 50% in 10 years, NHS data shows

Looks like strong correlation with deprived areas. More austerity victims.
I'm interested that it's driven by a rise in cases of bronchiolitis....having narrowly avoided miniocrity2 being hospitalised with that a week or so ago. Both my kids have had it and I'd no idea that it was classed as a kind of pneumonia. I had been wondering about air quality, as we live in the inner city but that article specifically links indoor air pollution as a risk factor as opposed to outdoor air pollution.

mikeh
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Re: World Pneumonia Day

Post by mikeh » Tue Nov 12, 2019 9:23 pm

Outdoor air pollution, the impact on the lungs will be much less than the concentrated nature of pollution in a house/building. In various parts of the world, smokeless cooking is a high-profile public health message, since cooking over a stove belching out smoke in a windowless small room is commonplace. When you're outside, the bad air of course spreads more easily.
For another infectious disease, you can reduce tuberculosis risk in a hospital environment by simply opening the windows. See this paper for an example of that https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/ ... 019-3717-9

Of slight tangent here, but I found this interesting on a recent trip to Addis Ababa - in Ethiopia it's common in the rural areas for women to head to a room out the back of their house where there's a firepit-type structure. They'll light it, sit over it, with smoke billowing away. The aim is to clear their vagina of impurities. It may be linked to cervical cancer. Colleagues of mine have started to gather a bit of data with that hypothesis in mind.
mediocrity511 wrote:
Tue Nov 12, 2019 3:13 pm
I'm interested that it's driven by a rise in cases of bronchiolitis....having narrowly avoided miniocrity2 being hospitalised with that a week or so ago. Both my kids have had it and I'd no idea that it was classed as a kind of pneumonia.
There are many academic papers that gently stroke their academic beards and muse over "what exactly is pneumonia?". As a rough rule of thumb, it's "a lower respiratory tract infection". Which would include bronchiolitis. Pneumonia is, in a way, a syndrome covering many different diagnoses.

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Sciolus
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Re: World Pneumonia Day

Post by Sciolus » Tue Nov 12, 2019 10:06 pm

mediocrity511 wrote:
Tue Nov 12, 2019 3:13 pm
I'm interested that it's driven by a rise in cases of bronchiolitis....having narrowly avoided miniocrity2 being hospitalised with that a week or so ago. Both my kids have had it and I'd no idea that it was classed as a kind of pneumonia. I had been wondering about air quality, as we live in the inner city but that article specifically links indoor air pollution as a risk factor as opposed to outdoor air pollution.
I'm not aware, off the top of my head, of any particular research showing a link between outdoor air pollution and pneumonia, but it seems plausible that there is one. However, outdoor air pollution has improved steadily over many years, so is not responsible for any increase in pneumonia rates.

Indoor air quality is much more complex and more poorly understood. Some sources have improved (smoking, lead, maybe cooking) but ventilation has decreased, so overall opinion is that it's a growing problem.

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Re: World Pneumonia Day

Post by dyqik » Tue Nov 12, 2019 10:08 pm

I thought outdoor air pollution had got a lot worse in UK cities in the past few years?

And that it was even worse in places like the tube in London.

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Sciolus
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Re: World Pneumonia Day

Post by Sciolus » Tue Nov 12, 2019 10:29 pm

Well, the Tube is a special case because there is a huge amount of metal wear and poor ventilation, so particulate matter levels are extremely high (by European standards, not Indian standards).

But no, despite the post-Dieselgate headlines, air quality is improving throughout Europe, and has been since the Clean Air Act of 1956. The air in the west is cleaner now that it has been since the industrial revolution (and if you include indoor air quality, since forever). Many reasons: reduction in solid fuel burning, ever-tightening controls on emissions from road vehicles and industrial sources, etc. It just isn't improving as fast as it should be, or as fast as it was expected to. Legal limits in Europe were set in a 1998 directive, with compliance dates of up to 2010 based on when, at that time, they were expected to be met. It was only in about 2008 that it became clear that road vehicle emissions control were working as they were supposed to be, and the 2010 compliance date would be missed in many urban locations.

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