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Dear Colleagues & Friends,

As Chairpersons of the 4th Global Conference for World Pneumonia Day 2024, it gives us great pleasure to invite you to join our event, which is part of the Worldwide Pneumonia Awareness Campaign-Pneumolight, with the support of the Philippine College of Physicians (PCP) in Manila, to be held on 9 November 2024.

Despite the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, pneumonia remains a neglected disease. Sadly, the 2021 Global Burden of Disease report showed that 2.1 million people died of pneumonia in that year; children under five years and adults over 70 continued to be the most vulnerable populations, with more than 500,000 and 1 million pneumonia-related deaths respectively. Another important problem is the impact of antimicrobial resistance (AMR); according to the 2019 GBD report, 1.27 million deaths were attributable to bacterial AMR in that year, and one in five deaths caused by AMR occurred in children under five years old. The 2019 GBD report identified Streptococcus pneumoniae as the most frequent pathogen causing pneumonia,
contributing to 16% of the deaths attributable to AMR.

Although great progress continues to be made, the worldwide burden of pneumonia remains huge. We need everyone to know about the disease and its impact on our health, and above all, we need to show that it can be prevented. Pneumonia must be recognized as a major global health problem. Until this recognition comes, we will continue our attempts to educate and prevent, because we know that education is prevention and prevention saves lives.

Working together, we can move the world because we know that if we fight, we can win!!!!

Yours sincerely,

Catia Cilloniz
Guinevere Dy-Agra
Rodolfo S. Pagcatipunan Jr