Pneumococcal diseases kill an estimated 826,000 under-5 year olds each year (O’Brien 2009). The burden of invasive pneumococcal disease is not evenly distributed across the world, but is generally highest in low-GDP per capita countries (World Health Organization 2000; World Bank 2000; O’Brien 2009) a relationship that holds for other diseases as well. The questions we need to ask then are: what policies are needed to help children in these countries live as long as their cohort in higher-GDP per capita countries? And, how can countries implement and finance those policies?  PneuMOD is an evolving mathematical model that gives us a tool to rigorously address these questions.

Sources:
O’Brien KL, Wolfson AJ, Watt JP, Henkle E, Deloria-Knoll M, McCall N, Lee E, Mulholland K, Levine OS, Cherian T. 2009. Burden of disease caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae in children younger than 5 years: global estimates. Lancet (374) 893-902

World Bank. 2000. GDP per capita. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?page=2

World Health Organization. 2000. Estimated Hib and pneumococcal deaths for children under 5 years of age. http://www.who.int/immunization_monitoring/burden/Pneumo_hib_estimates/en/index2.html