Take a deep breath and act now to stop more pneumonia deaths

As I sit preparing to write this article, I take a deep breath and think about how easy it is for me to do that. Breathe. It is the most natural thing in the world, something we all do thousands of times a day and take for granted. Yet for millions of children around the world, breathing is made extremely difficult due to one disease: pneumonia.

It may be shocking to many, but pneumonia is the leading cause of child deaths around the world. A staggering 920,000 children under five years lost their lives to pneumonia in 2015. Figures are always difficult to picture in real life, but this equates to a child dying every two minutes.