Dimagi joins new Diarrhea and Pneumonia Working Group

On Thursday June 20th, the Diarrhea and Pneumonia Working Group chaired by UNICEF and the Clinton Health Access Initiative heartily endorsed the establishment of a Pneumonia Innovations Team to accelerate development of the diagnostic and treatment innovations that can have a direct and significant impact on reducing child pneumonia mortality.

The team will be co-chaired by the MDG Health Alliance and PATH with membership from UNICEF, WHO, Save the Children, MSH, FHI-360, Malaria Consortium, World Vision, USAID, BMGF, Dimagi, frog, Design that Matters, Project HOPE, Guardit, Philips Research, LifeLine, Boston University, University of British Columbia, Consortium for Affordable Medical Technology at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Designmatters at Art Center College of Design.

Pneumonia is the leading killer of children under 5 (1.3 million estimated deaths in 2011) and one of the major reasons so many children die is that families and healthcare providers do not have the information and tools they need to identify the warning signs and diagnose and treat pneumonia effectively and quickly.

If this team can accelerate access to easy to use, affordable diagnostic and treatment innovations that will shorten the delays between symptom onset and treatment among children with pneumonia (particularly in India, Nigeria, DRC, Pakistan, China and Ethiopia), we will have an impact on reducing child pneumonia deaths.