"She’s been so sick since she got pneumonia"

Why aren’t more children protected against deadly diseases?

At MSF’s hospital in Irbid, Jordan, near the Syrian border, a teenager named Samaha was exhausted from watching over her eleven-year-old sister. The younger girl was seriously ill

“She’s in a lot of pain,” Samaha said. “Last night she woke up and told me she wanted to give up. That’s when we brought her to the hospital.” Samaha’s sister was diagnosed with pneumonia. Pneumonia kills more children under the age of five than any other disease, and can be dangerous for older ones, too.

Dr. Anas Shorman is a pediatrician at the hospital, which cares for Syrian refugees. “We see many children with life-threatening respiratory infections,” he said. "Pneumonia is common. A vaccine called pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) can easily protect against it. Many deaths could be prevented if we could vaccinate more kids with PCV.”

Fortunately, with good care, Samaha’s sister recovered.