Acute respiratory illness in children: PHC responses

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Acute respiratory illness (ARI) is one of the major health problems and killers of young children. Along with diarrhoea, immunizable diseases, malnutrition and antenatal and intranatal insults, ARI contributes to about 75% of child mortality in developing countries. Evidence is clear that much of the mortality and morbidity from ARI is preventable. Specific efforts to decrease risks of ARI have been proposed and the development of new vaccines is being pushed. The use of antibiotics for lower respiratory tract infections is well accepted and of known efficacy in bacterial infections. The evidence from developing countries demonstrating that a high proportion of pneumonias involve bacterial infection and the documentation of the effectiveness of simple antibiotic regimens have convinced many that the time is ripe to introduce control efforts for ARI much more actively into primary health care programmes. This involves a number of controversial issues including making antibiotics more available at the primary care level, special training of health care workers to give injections, potentials for misuse and development of antibiotic resistance. But the deaths of 4 million children a year demand that we move as rapidly into this programme as possible, all the while striving to identify more effective approaches.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: