As a music lover and former CEO of MTV Networks International, I’ve spent decades trying to give voice to young people struggling for creative freedom. More recently though I’ve also taken to a new cause: the struggle of babies and children in poor countries just to survive.

Few people can even name the leading global killer of young children — it’s pneumonia — and it claims a child’s life every 20 seconds. Not surprisingly, the overwhelming majority of these deaths take place in the developing world where access to health prevention and care is sometimes complicated.

World Pneumonia Day (WPD), November 12, is an opportunity to remember those many young lives lost to pneumonia which could have been prevented in large part with vaccines, access to simple antibiotics and improved nutrition. If we could ensure that existing vaccines reach those children who need them most we would make a huge difference in preventing the more than 1.5 million young lives lost each year to this devastating disease.

Until recently, it would have taken 10 to 15 years for a vaccine released in the United States or Europe to be available in the developing world. Thankfully, the GAVI Alliance has been able to dramatically accelerate that timeline for the introduction of the pneumococcal vaccines, bringing them to the developing world much faster. GAVI is an innovative and effective organization which aims to use the same model for other lifesaving vaccines.

This weekend, in time for World Pneumonia Day, Malawi will become the 16th GAVI-supported country to introduce this life-saving vaccine. Three million children living in developing countries have already been reached, and another ten million are expected to receive the vaccine in 2012. This fact is especially important when one considers that 98.5 percent of pneumonia deaths occur in less developed countries, where distance, poverty and other factors put medical care out of reach for many.

As parents, we would stop at nothing to protect our children if they were sick. Many families — in rich and poor countries alike — are living in poverty or debt as a result of sickness in the family. By preventing disease in the first place, immunization can eliminate the need for hospitalization or expensive medical treatment, and in many cases help families avoid succumbing to poverty.

The introduction of the pneumococcal vaccine into the world’s poorest countries is a cornerstone of GAVI’s ambitious plan to ensure that all of the world’s children have a healthy start in life. But much remains to be done. Millions of children still do not receive this vaccine as well as other routine immunizations, and GAVI will need the continuing support and commitment of its donors to ensure that they do.

By 2015, the GAVI Alliance plans to help about 60 countries introduce this vaccine into their routine immunization systems, reaching a total of 90 million children. By helping to protect children with vaccines, GAVI partners and donors are supporting a major contribution to the Millennium Development Goal 4 which calls for a two thirds reduction in child mortality by 2015.

Key to this contribution has been GAVI’s Advance Market Commitment (AMC), an innovative finance mechanism that has accelerated the production of pneumococcal vaccines. By concluding long-term supply agreements at a ceiling price, the AMC reduced market uncertainty, thereby encouraging manufacturers to develop adequate production capacity and supply at lower prices. The AMC was made possible with US$ 1.5 billion from Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, Russia, Norway, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and is part of a broader GAVI plan to ensure that all children have equal access to life saving vaccines.

This World Pneumonia Day, join me in spreading the message that no child should die of a disease we can prevent.

Certainly the funniest vaccine video I’ve ever seen…via GAVI:

An animated infographic that illustrates interesting facts about pneumonia…via World Pneumonia Day. Click on the graphic to see the full version on Facebook:

World Pneumonia Day has produced a powerful cartoon on the effects of pneumonia and the simple vaccines that can prevent it:

Do you have a blog? Join GAVI’s Blog Carnival and join the crowd already making some noise to put a stop to this “silent killer.”

Ever wondered what it’s like to work on the ground to fight against this disease? Learn more by reading Benase Triase’s inspiring story about the difference that new pneumonia vaccines will make to his fight against the disease at a village clinic in Malawi.

GAVI is also running a special blog and video series to spread pneumonia awareness and to call for funding that could prevent the deaths of 1.5 million children worldwide. Check in for updates about their work, send them a note to show them your support, and stay tuned for what you can do to help.

Anything else on the web on World Pneumonia Day that you like? Share it with us in the comments below.

Man on the Street with Malaka: Vaccines from ONE Campaign on Vimeo.

Although I interviewed just a small number of people, it was clear that most people had no idea what the answers were: diarrhea and pneumonia. It’s crazy that those two illnesses are a major cause of death for children under the age of five in poor countries. When I was a tiny tot, I got pneumonia a couple of times — but because of modern hospitals and treatments, it never escalated to the point of being life-threatening or anything like that. If I was born in a country in sub-Saharan Africa and that happened to me, I probably wouldn’t be here today.

That’s why vaccines are so incredibly, incredibly important for children in the developing world. Just a few doses can provide a lifetime of protection and a chance for a healthy start in life. With the help of vaccines, we’ve been able to beat polio by 99 percent and completely eradicate smallpox. Imagine if every child in the world was immunized against pneumonia (which, by the way, kills more people than HIV/AIDS and malaria combined) and diarrhea — we could save millions of lives.

As we’ve been hinting for weeks, ONE will be launching a huge action around vaccines sometime soon. But before we officially introduce the petition to you, my plan (as your trusty editor of the ONE Blog) is to make sure you know everything you need to know about vaccines.

Although vaccines may not be the sexiest subject in the world, they have the incredible power to stop two of the biggest killers of children in poor countries: diarrhea and pneumonia, two completely preventable diseases.

So, over the next few weeks, keep an eye out for posts in our new series, “The Power of Vaccines.” Hopefully, they’ll help explain why vaccines are one of the most powerful health interventions ever developed, why we should invest in them and how we can get vaccines to the people who need them the most.

There will be guest posts from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, PATH and GAVI. There will be something about Alaska and dogs, although I want that to be a surprise so I won’t say too much more on that. And there will be a chance for you to pick our global health expert Todd Summers’ brain a little bit.

Either way, stay tuned to the ONE Blog for more updates. On Friday, I’ll be sharing a few man-on-the-street interviews that I conducted in front of the White House. They’re kind of embarrassing…but I think you’ll love it. Meanwhile, take a look at the video above — it traces one rotavirus vaccine’s path through Nicaragua.

This morning in Kenya, I had an exciting preview to an event we’re anticipating in my country, Cameroon, later on this year. Specifically, I joined the president of Kenya and other leaders for the celebration of the introduction of a new vaccine against the leading cause of pneumonia.

In Kenya today, there is a big momentum with the introduction of pneumococcal vaccine. Almost 1,000 people were gathered to celebrate the roll-out of this new vaccine. In Cameroon, we hope to gather even more! I can’t wait to see Cameroonian kids getting vaccinated and protected for life from a disease that kills over a million people every year worldwide.

In both, Kenya and Cameroon, pneumonia is a leading child-killer. Pneumonia is the number one killer of children under five worldwide and very few people know about it. There is too little awareness and knowledge about the enormous burden of pneumonia among young children in Africa, and we need to change this.

What can we do? Speak-up about the issue, mobilize, and engage! I will speak-up in the Cameroonian and the Pan African Parliament. I will engage my Government, colleagues, constituents, relatives, friends, and civil society organizations to raise as more awareness as possible about the importance of immunization. In Cameroon, the most remote areas in the country do not have easy access to health centers and to immunization. In order to change this, what we really need in the first place is political will at the highest levels.

I have learned a lot today about the role of the GAVI Alliance and its partners, and most of all about the importance of the commitment of donor and implementing countries for fighting child mortality. As a Member of Parliament, I will continue advocating in my country and at international level for the promotion of maternal and child health. I call the Finance Committee Chairs of African Parliaments to make sure they insist in securing funding for vaccines through their national budgets. We need to keep calling donor countries as well as African leaders to increase financing for health, especially for vaccines and immunization. It really is our responsibility to take the lead in investing in children’s health and ensuring adequate health financing in national budgets. This is for the sake of our economic growth and development. Our children are our future!

Today is an historic global health moment marking the global roll-out of pneumococcal vaccine in Africa. In the coming months, Cameroon will join the initial group of countries introducing this life-saving vaccine, and that it is really exciting!

To read more about it please click here.

Here’s why this new vaccine is so important: In the developing world, pneumonia kills in the neighborhood of 1.4 million kids every year. Pneumococcal, the deadliest strain of that illness (and a major cause of what we might call “regular” pneumonia), kills 800,000. Call me crazy, but this new vaccine to prevent pneumococcal is a Really. Big. Deal.

We are interested in seeing the soup-to-nuts operation of delivering a new vaccination in a single health facility so the good folks at GAVI have made our arrangements. (Pardon while I digress for a moment to praise GAVI for what it is doing to help keep the poorest children on the planet alive and healthy. And let me say thanks to those –- especially the United States -– who help make their work possible.)

There weren’t many people here when we arrived around 9 a.m. But, before long, moms with small babies were streaming in, signing in, weighing their babies and getting in the vaccine “bench line.” (They sit in order on long benches and slide over each time the next client is admitted to the vaccination room. This is the only place in Kenya I have seen people actually form a queue.)

Some have come for their babies’ regular vaccinations and only learn of the new pneumococcal vaccine when they arrive. Others had heard of the vaccine through community health workers deployed to spread the news and, even though up-to-date with their babies’ regular shots have brought them in for the pneumococcal.

This health center is the Langata (sometimes called Kibera) District’s regional distribution center for the 36 clinics within the district. They collect all of the vaccines from the Regional Disbursement Center and, since they must maintain the cold chain to ensure the efficacy and safety of the vaccine, haul them back to Langata in well-used, white Styrofoam coolers. There, they are stored in an upright, avocado green refrigerator that looks older than I am –- which is pretty old. But, it works and that’s what counts. They are then divided up and dispersed to the 27 clinics in the District that have trained personnel to give the vaccines.

The vaccine is in a clear bottle with a red top and is given in the child’s right leg. Some are quite stoic with these multiple sticks with long needles. Others are indignant, outraged, and generally unhappy. Can’t say as I blame them.

Lavendar and Valum are just receiving their vaccines and happen to be two of the stoic. Their moms hold the ubiquitous purple-pink booklets that contain their babies’ medical history and vaccinations.

While all of this may seem routine and boring, believe me when I tell you that for these mothers and babies this new vaccine is anything but routine and boring. It has the potential to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of children under the age of five. Actually, there’s no way that’s routine and boring.

Valum’s mom, Sarah, tells me that she didn’t know about the new vaccine but is very happy to have it because pneumonia is a dangerous illness for children. Metrine, mom of Lavandar, agrees. Some of the women I speak to know families who have lost a child to pneumonia.

Sarah and Metrine understand that without support from developed countries this vaccine would probably not be available to their babies. They both ask me to thank Americans. I ask them if there is anything they would like to say directly to the decision-makers in Washington.

Yes, they say. Please tell them again thank you, their help is very much appreciated and their support is paramount for the health of our children.

Amen.

Greetings from Nicaragua! On Sunday, I joined Minister of Health Dr. Sonia Castro Gonzalez, GAVI board member Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez Gonzalez and my colleagues from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and UNICEF to witness the vaccination of the first child with the new vaccine that protects children in developing countries against the worst forms of pneumonia — the biggest single killer of children under five years worldwide.

This was a special moment for us all because it marked the beginning of a global immunization program with this new pneumococcal conjugate vaccine in the world’s poorest countries, supported by the GAVI Alliance. GAVI plans to support this vaccine’s introduction in more than 40 developing countries, which will prevent approximately 700,000 deaths by 2015 and up to seven million deaths by 2030.

The significance of the occasion was clearly lost on Caleb Alexander Martinez, who at just 10 weeks, had no idea why the entire community had turned out to watch the minister personally vaccinate him. And even less idea why everyone in the audience cheered as he burst into tears at the prick of the needle!

However, for the parents and health workers present, it was a cause for celebration because pneumonia is responsible for 20 percent of the total deaths of Nicaraguan children under five (18 percent globally) and is an experience that has touched too many of them personally. The introduction of this vaccine, together with other vaccines already funded by GAVI, will enable millions of children to grow up and go to school free from illness and disease.

Historically, there is a 10- to 15-year time lag between when new vaccines are first introduced in rich countries and in developing countries. But with today’s introduction, I am proud to report that the GAVI Alliance has bucked that trend and helped introduce this particular vaccine in the same year it was first used in the United States.

Honduras, Guyana, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Yemen and the Democratic Republic of Congo are among the next GAVI-eligible countries that will be rolling out pneumococcal vaccines in early 2011. If GAVI receives the additional funding it needs, we hope to provide the vaccine to more than 40 countries by 2015.

For every one child who dies of pneumococcal disease in wealthy countries, 2,000 children die in developing countries. Children’s futures should be protected regardless of where they are born. Please help us by calling on donor governments, foundations and the private sector to continue and increase their support for our mission so that millions more children, like Caleb Alexander Martinez, can start life protected from disease.

-Helen Evans, Interim CEO of the GAVI Alliance

Take a look at some of our Brooke Riley’s photos from the event in the slideshow. She’s on our global health policy team and couldn’t wait to get a photo with the bright blue bodysuit-wearing Pneumonia Fighters, the official mascot of World Pneumonia Day. Be sure to read her captions — as you can already tell from the photo below, she has a little bit of explaining to do!

For World Pneumonia Day this year, I am speaking at the flagship UK event, which is being held in the Houses of Parliament. I will be speaking in front of an audience of parliamentarians, government representatives, leading NGOs and other interested parties, and I am proud that I will be able to relay to them the story of Sierra Leone’s progress in fighting terrible diseases such as pneumonia, the leading killer of children worldwide.

In the recent past, Sierra Leone has had some turbulence, including political instability and conflict. This was reflected in our health care outcomes. Back in 2000, during the Civil War, maternal mortality stood at 1,300 deaths per 100,000 and child mortality stood at 252 deaths per 1,000. These are staggering figures, which suggested a bleak future for my country.

But we have spent the last few years building political stability and moving forward. One of the key strands of our redevelopment has been investment in health care. Since 2000, total expenditure on health as a percentage of gross domestic product has increased by 17 percent, and per capita government spending on health care has doubled since 1995.

Our current president, Ernest Bai Koroma, is particularly strident in improving health care outcomes. Last April he launched the Free Health Care Services for Pregnant and Lactating Women and Young Children strategy. This has had some impressive initial results. The numbers of children and mothers seeking medical health has doubled and the use of anti-malarial drugs for children has increased by more than 372 percent.

We are striding forward, and our maternal and child mortality rates have fallen by an impressive 31 percent and 23 percent respectively.

But we do face significant challenges going forward. Pneumonia is one of these challenges. Each year this terrible disease claims the lives of 8,500 children in Sierra Leone. That is 23 children every day. Together, pneumonia and diarrhea account for an estimated 40 percent of all child deaths.

But we are taking this dreadful disease on. We rolled out the Hib vaccine recently, which protects against one of the major causes of pneumonia, and next year we will roll out the pneumococcal vaccine, which will help to protect children against the leading cause of pneumonia.

This has been made possible through our determination and through the support of organizations such as the GAVI Alliance, who are helping us to roll out the pneumococcal vaccine next year as well as supporting us through recent years. We are also indebted to the work of a number of other key organizations like the ONE.

So, on the occasion of World Pneumonia Day, I am proud to say that Sierra Leone is a country on the move. And next World Pneumonia Day, I hope to be able to report even further progress in tackling devastating diseases such as pneumonia.
For more information please go to the Sierra Leone High Commission website.

Mr. Edward Turay is high commissioner for Sierra Leone in the UK. He has held the position since the beginning of this year and was previously a leading politician for the ruling ACP party in Sierra Leone.

More than 1.5 million kids under the age of 5 die every year from pneumonia.

Who knew?

In wealthy countries, we tend to think of pneumonia as a disease of the elderly, but pneumonia actually kills more young children than HIV, measles and malaria combined. Another child dies from pneumonia every 20 seconds.

Today is a day that’s meant to bring attention to pneumonia, the leading killer of young children. You probably didn’t wake up thinking about World Pneumonia Day, but now that you know, it’s a great opportunity to spend a few minutes to learn how you can make a difference.

Pneumonia is an infection in the lungs that makes it impossible to take in enough air to survive, and is particularly dangerous for children that are otherwise weakened by malnutrition and limited access to proper health care. It can be caused by a range of factors, some environmental (like air pollution) and others by infections. These factors can be easily addressed, so fighting pneumonia is a matter of commitment and funding. That’s where you can help.

For infection control, the single best tool is a vaccine. We have a safe, effective vaccine to prevent pneumonia, and yet because 98.5 percent of child deaths from pneumonia are in low-income countries, many of those children and their families can’t afford the tool that could save their lives.

Fortunately, there’s a well-established organization ready to help poor countries get the vaccine out to children. The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) was established by donors to pool their funding to buy and distribute new child vaccines. So far, it has helped vaccinate 60 million children for a range of diseases including Hib (Haemophilus influenza b) a major cause of pneumonia. There are also new vaccines against pneumococcal disease, the leading cause of pneumonia, and GAVI plans to introduce these in more than 40 of the world’s lowest-income countries by 2015.

But here’s the big caveat: GAVI’s plans to roll out new and underused vaccines are contingent on sufficient funding, and they face a major funding gap between now and 2015. GAVI needs fairly modest financial commitments to help the world’s most vulnerable, and ONE will be putting the heat on donor governments to step up in the next year.

So now that you know, it’s time to take action, and you’ve got a lot of easy options to choose from:

• Join ONE.org and stay tuned as we prepare for a major advocacy campaign for child vaccines
• Read more about the impressive work of GAVI, and consider a donation to cover the cost of vaccinating a child against pneumonia and other infections
• Spread the word about pneumonia by sharing this video, wearing blue jeans, or encouraging your friends and family to sign a PneumoniaGram.