Childhood pneumonia can be treated at home

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Treating severe pneumonia in children at home with oral antibiotics works just as well as treating them with intravenous drugs at a hospital as advised by the World Health Organization, scientists said on Thursday.

Pneumonia is one of the world's leading child killers, particularly in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

The researchers said their findings in this study of 2,037 children ages 3 to 5 in Pakistan should prompt the U.N. health agency to change its recommendations on treating severe childhood pneumonia.

The WHO advises that children with severe pneumonia be referred to a hospital and treated with intravenous antibiotics. But many sick children in developing nations are unable to reach a hospital for such treatment, the researchers said. And oral treatment at home is much cheaper, they added.

About 2 million of the 10 million deaths annually in children under age 5 worldwide are caused by pneumonia -- an inflammation of the lungs caused by an infection.

"It exceeds malaria, it certainly exceeds HIV and it exceeds diarrheal diseases, too," Dr. Donald Thea of the Boston University School of Public Health, one of the researchers, said in a telephone interview.

The study involved children with severe pneumonia who arrived at hospitals in seven locations in Pakistan. About half were sent home to take an oral antibiotic, amoxicillin, in syrup form. The others were treated intravenously in the hospital with an equivalent antibiotic, ampicillin.

STUDY: HOME TREATMENT SAFE, EFFECTIVE