Poor guidelines linked to pneumonia deaths among children above five years

Children between five and 14 years have been neglected, with pneumonia accounting for 11 per cent of deaths in this group, a research has revealed.

A study recently conducted in Kenya has established there are no validated guidelines to manage pneumonia in children above five years.

The study, published this month in the BMJ Global Health journal, was aimed to understand risk factors for deaths among these children diagnosed with pneumonia at 13 sub-county level health facilities in the country.

It found that this category of children had a high inpatient pneumonia mortality than those below five years.

However, pneumonia deaths have not been reported before in these age groups and, perhaps surprisingly, they are similar to those reported in hospital-based pneumonia studies of children under five, the report says.

These unexpected higher fatality rates could be as a result of late reporting to hospitals, inadequate guidance for primary care workers on what constitutes severe illness in this group, late introduction of pneumococcal vaccination in Kenya in 2011. This means the majority of the children studied would not have been immunised