Kenya has joined
other nations of the globe in commemorating World Pneumonia Day.
This
comes at a time when shocking statistics stating that each year, pneumonia kills more
children than HIV and AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis combined, and remains
the leading infectious cause of death among children under-five, killing nearly
2,500 children a day, with most victims under two years
of age.
‘Every 35 seconds a child dies of
pneumonia, with 99 percent of deaths occurring in low-resource settings in
developing countries, which are typically rural with poor healthcare
facilities, and where treatment is not available for many children,’ General
Manager Philips East Africa Roelof Assies continues.
Philips Head of Research Africa Bahaa
Eddine Sarroukh says that diagnosing children suffering from pneumonia is a
challenge.
‘Children need to be calm when being
diagnosed but the pain makes them restless. It will be difficult to count the
breathing per minute which helps in diagnosis. Health care givers have reported
such challenges also, ’ adds Sarroukh.
Philips has announced the upcoming
release of a Children’s Automated Respiration Monitor, aimed to help improve
the diagnosis and treatment of pneumonia in low-resource countries, potentially
preventing many of the 935,000 childhood deaths caused by pneumonia each year.
The Children’s Automated Respiration Monitor has the potential to assist
community health workers in establishing a more accurate measurement of a sick
child’s breathing rate to help improve the diagnosis of pneumonia.
‘This technology will help to
accurately determine a child’s breathing per minute which is vital in
determining if a child is infected by pneumonia. World health Organization WHO
advises that if 50 or more breaths per minute are detected in a child 2 months
-12 months then the child is sick with pneumonia. So is a child aged between 12
months -5years who records 40 or more bretahs per minute’, explains Sarroukh.
One important aspect in diagnosing
pneumonia is monitoring a child’s breathing rate. In many emerging markets,
community health workers manually count through visual inspection, how many
breaths a child takes in the span of one minute. But achieving an accurate
count can be difficult, as shallow breaths are hard to detect, children often
move around and there may be distractions and other checks to perform.
The Philips Children’s Automated
Respiration Monitor converts chest movements detected by accelerometers into an
accurate breathing count, using specially developed algorithms. The monitor not
only provides quantitative feedback, but also qualitative feedback to the
healthcare provider based on the World Health Organization’s IMCI (Integrated Management
of Childhood Illness) guidelines to diagnose fast breathing rates, which is one
of the key vital signs to diagnosing pneumonia.
Accurate diagnosis of breathing counts
would support health workers in administering the antibiotics that children with
pneumonia need, potentially preventing many of the deaths caused by pneumonia
each year. Additionally, accurate diagnosis could help rationalize the use of
antibiotics, by potentially reducing unnecessary costs and antibiotics overuse
rates, which contributes to the rise of drug-resistant diseases.
'The Philips Children’s Automated
Respiration Monitor will be a game changer in diagnosing and treating
pneumonia,” said Salim Sadruddin,
Senior Child Health Advisor at NGO, Save the Children. says “If we can remove the subjectivity
associated with health workers counting breaths, we can improve the quality of
treatment and help improve patient outcomes.'
Global child health organizations
like UNICEF have made pneumonia a key area of focus in their effort to reduce
child mortality in underdeveloped countries throughout the world. UNICEF’s
Supply Chain division’s product innovation project called ARIDA, launched a
call for technology to industry in 2011, with the aim to achieve innovation in
this space, followed by the publication of a Target Product Profile ( for
automated respiration monitoring in November of 2014.
‘Today, the population growth is
highest in emerging markets like Africa and South East Asia, and innovation can
help drive sustainable solutions that bridge the divide between the privileged
and lesser privileged sections of society to improve the quality of life at all
levels.“ said JJ van Dongen, CEO Philips Africa
The development of the Philips
Children’s Automated Respiration Monitor has been a result of collaboration
between the Philips Africa Innovation Hub located in Nairobi, Kenya, the
Philips Research team in Eindhoven, The Netherlands and the Philips Innovation
Campus in Bangalore, India. Field testing on the Children’s Automated
Respiration Monitor was conducted in East Africa and India and improvements in
design and technology incorporated on the basis of feedback from local
community health workers and clinical officers in these low-resource settings.
The Philips Children’s Automated
Respiration Monitor is pending CE-marking and is expected to become
commercially available from the second quarter of 2016 that is around April and
May next year.
