The World Health Organisation (WHO) and United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) plan to save up to 5.3 million children from dying from the disease.

Kenya is among countries that account for 97 per cent of the global maternal and child deaths.

The nations are referred to as "Countdown to 2015 countries". This is due to the concerted efforts needed in these countries to meet the Millennium Development Goals on health in the next six years.

The joint strategy report by the UN agencies is titled ‘The Global action plan for the prevention and control of pneumonia (Gapp)’, and was released earlier this week.

"This action plan provides the strategy to prevent and control pneumonia, which today kills more children than any other illness," said Margaret Chan, Director-General of WHO.

Added Dr Chan: "We know the strategy will work, and if it is applied in every high-burden country, we will be able to prevent millions of deaths."

Unicef Executive Director Ann Veneman said pneumonia was the leading cause of under age five mortality, killing more than 4,000 children daily.

"Effective interventions to reduce deaths caused by pneumonia must be used more widely and made more readily available for children at risk," said Ms Veneman.

The report includes recommendations on what needs to be done, specific goals and targets and estimates of what it will cost and how many lives will be saved.

Its aim is to increase awareness of pneumonia as a major cause of child deaths and it calls on global and national policy-makers, donor agencies and civil society to take immediate action to implement the plan.

Specific targets and goals to be reached by 2015 under the Gapp strategy are to expand coverage of all relevant vaccines and exclusive breastfeeding rates to 90 per cent.

"Level of access to appropriate pneumonia case management will be raised to 90 per cent. This will lead to a reduction in child pneumonia deaths by 65 per cent and cutting the number of severe pneumonia cases in children by 25 per cent, compared to 2000 levels," states part o