Comprehensive Etiological and Epidemiological Study on Acute Respiratory Infections in Children: Providing Evidence for the Prevention and Control of Childhood Pneumonia in the Philippines

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Childhood pneumonia has been the leading cause of morbidity and mortality for decades. Although substantial progress in the understanding of risk factors and etiology of pneumonia has been made, childhood pneumonia remains the major cause of death in children, accounting for 900,000 of the estimated 6.3 million child deaths worldwide in 2013. More than 90% of all episodes of clinical childhood pneumonia worldwide occur in low and middle-income countries. More effective and feasible interventions need to be developed and made widely available for such countries, including the Philippines. Comprehensive research, including etiological and epidemiological studies for assessments of risk factors and thereby, intervention studies to reduce the impact of childhood pneumonia are required in hospital settings, as well as community settings, consistently. A research project entitled “comprehensive etiological and epidemiological study on acute respiratory infections in children: providing evidence for the prevention and control of childhood pneumonia, the Philippines” was conducted under SATREPS (Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development), which is a funding scheme to promote international joint research focusing on global issues. This project was implemented in four sentinel hospitals, with some community settings, in the Philippines between April 2011 and March 2017, incorporating five sub-components: etiological study, disease burden study, risk factor analysis, intervention study, and its evaluation. In this paper, we introduce the research project of SATREPS focusing on the methodologies, progress, and obtained evidence.