Preventable Diseases
There's a helpless feeling when a child becomes sick. But this helplessness can be made even more overwhelming when the child is sick - and dying - from a preventable disease or common ailment. Every year, more than six million children die from preventable causes like tuberculosis, pneumonia and diarrhea. Many families cannot afford the medical treatment and vaccinations that could easily keep children healthy.
Diarrhoea
We all know about diarrhoea and how prone we were to it as children. But what if we caught diarrhoea and there was no clean water to re-hydrate us? What if the only thing we could drink was likely to make our illness worse? This is why so many children die from diarrhoea in the developing world.
Symptoms - Diarrhoea is defined as the 'passage of excessively liquid or excessively frequent stools' by the World Health Organisation (WHO). It is often accompanied by fever, loss of appetite and dehydration.
Transmission - Diarrhoea can be caused from a variety of things; most frequently by unsafe water. Over 90% of deaths from diarrhoea for children under five are caused by unhygienic water supplies. Gone off or under cooked food can also cause diarrhoea and it is a side effect of many other illnesses.
Prevalence - Nearly 2 million people die from diarrhoea every year. Unclean water is the main culprit for causing diarrhoea and over a third of sub-Saharan Africans do not have access to clean water1 and therefore are greatly at risk from infection. Although a worldwide problem; deaths from diarrhoea are mainly restricted to the developing world (a child who contracts diarrhoea in a developing country is 520 times more likely to die than their counterparts in Europe or the USA1).
Treatment - Diarrhoea is traditionally cured by slowly rehydrating the infected. There are also many over-the-counter medicines you can buy in developed countries for treatment. A new drug and vaccine to combat rotavirus (the most common cause of diarrhoea) is currently being developed. If everybody had access to clean and safe water then diarrhoea would certainly not be such a big problem. It is thought that clean drinking water can reduce diarrhoea by 39%1. There is no reason why millions of people should be dying from such a simple, curable illness.
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is a disease that can be both immunized against and treated once it is caught. Why then do 2 million children under five die from it every year in developing countries?
Symptoms - Children who have pneumonia will experience difficultly in breathing, wheezing, fever, headaches and loss of appetite. Young children can lose consciousness and suffer seizures. The tell-tale signs of pneumonia are rapid breathing or difficulty in breathing.
Transmission - There is much speculation as to how pneumonia bacteria are ingested into the lungs. It is believed that they child contracts it from infected water droplets in the air; bacteria that already exists in the nose and throat is breathed into the lungs; or by blood-to-blood contact i.e. from mother to foetus and in much the same ways that HIV is transmitted.
Prevalence - Pneumonia causes 19% of all deaths in children under five. It is thought that 150 million children in the developing world will contract the disease every year; 95% of the total number of cases worldwide. Between 10 and 20 million of these children will be hospitalized and an estimated 2 million will die. 44 million infected children will come from India.
Treatment - There is a vaccine for pneumonia and antibiotics that will treat the infection. Pneumonia is still the biggest killer of children worldwide. Much needs to be done to protect children against it; parents need to be able to recognize early symptoms and have access to the healthcare that will save their children from falling victim to this illness.
Tuberculosis
TB is a preventable and curable disease and yet people all over the world are still dying from it. Older children, young adults and those that are HIV-positive are particularly susceptible to infection.
Symptoms - The common, tell-tale sign of a TB infection is coughing up blood. Symptoms of the disease include a prolonged cough, chest pains, fever, exhaustion and significant weight loss.
Transmission - TB is caught like a cold or the flu, through the air via an infected persons cough or sneeze. Only 5 to 10% of people who are infected with TB bacilli (and are not HIV-positive) become infectious or develop the disease in their lifetime. Someone who is at the active stage of tuberculosis is thought to infect ten to fifteen people each year.
Prevalence - TB exists throughout the world. 34% of all tuberculosis cases are in Southeast Asia and 29% are in Africa.1 A person is clearly much more likely to be infected in the less developed regions of the globe. In 2005 1.6 million people died from tuberculosis worldwide.2 More than half of all TB deaths occur in Asia.
Treatment - There is a tuberculosis vaccine, known as the BCG, which is very common in developed countries. TB is treated by a course of drugs. The multi-drug resistant strain of TB (MDR-TB) is still treatable, but many patients will require a prolonged course of chemotherapy. Extensively drug resistant (XDR) TB is threatening the efforts of medical personnel to control the disease. XDR-TB is most often found in patients that are already infected with HIV i.e. places such as Africa where both diseases are widespread. If we inoculate all people in the world against tuberculosis we would eradicate the infection. Because of the poverty in developing countries, children are missing out on receiving this crucial immunization and are therefore at risk from developing or infecting other people with the disease later in life, especially in areas where HIV is more common.