SHILLONG: The number of cases of people dying of pneumonia in the State is growing at an alarming rate. This was in the Pneumonia and Diarrhoea Progress Report which was released by the International Vaccine Access Centre (IVAC) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health recently.
As per the report, Meghalaya is at the lowest rank in terms of prevention, with only 38 per cent of successful intervention in treating of pneumonia cases while the Goa is the best-performing state in the country 66 per cent of successful intervention.
In 2012, Meghalaya recorded a total of 13,601 cases of pneumonia with 42 deaths while Assam reported 25,816 pneumonia cases, with 100 deaths.
Manipur recorded 1,714 cases with 10 deaths Arunachal Pradesh had 2,109 cases with 11 deaths and Tripura registered 3,458 cases with 56 deaths.
Nagaland was the best of the North Eastern states with only six deaths out of 2,227 cases.
As per the report, the low percentage of successful intervention can be attributed to a delay in introduction of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCV) or rotavirus vaccine and poor coverage of pneumonia intervention programmes.
When contacted, officials in the Health and Family Welfare refused to give any comment claiming that the Director of health services (maternity child health) was on leave will be appropriate person to reply on this issue.