With communications in high gear for World Pneumonia Day, I have spent a lot of time recently helping to get out the word about the world's leading killer of children under five.

The Global Coalition against Child Pneumonia, which was formed last year and of which PATH is a member, came together to raise awareness about the fact that pneumonia kills more than 1.5 million children under five every year, and to encourage governments to take action to combat it.

On World Pneumonia Day last year, UNICEF and the WHO released a joint Global Action Plan on the Prevention and Control of Pneumonia (GAPP). The GAPP outlined three proven health interventions that it estimated could save a million children's lives every year: prevention of infection through vaccination against the leading causes of pneumonia; preventive actions such as exclusive breastfeeding, hand-washing, reducing indoor air pollution, and improving nutrition for older children; and treatment with antibiotics for children who fall ill with pneumonia.

And of course, the second biggest killer of children under five comes up often in the messages and conversations about pneumonia. There's also a vaccine against the leading cause of severe infant diarrhoeal disease, and many of the same behaviours that protect young children from pneumonia will also help them avoid diarrhoea infections. Likewise, simple treatments for children who fall ill would save an enormous number of lives.

I work for PATH on the GAVI Alliance Accelerated Vaccine Introduction Initiative, a partnership designed to facilitate the rapid and large-scale introduction of vaccines against pneumococcal disease (the leading cause of pneumonia) and against rotavirus (the leading cause of severe infant diarrhoea) in the world's poorest countries, as well as to establish a platform for the future introduction of other new vaccines.

For the moment, I concentrate on “pneumo and rota”—which together place tremendous burden on the developing world but can be prevented through safe and effective vaccines. My job is in communications, so you would think that a message this strong would be pretty easy to spread, wouldn't you?

But as we approach World Pneumonia Day, it is increasingly clear how few people in wealthy countries have any idea pneumonia takes more young kids' lives than any other illness. Similarly, although messaging on diarrhoea has had more impact over the years, hardly anyone has heard of rotavirus—much less that there is an effective vaccine that could protect children against it.

There is still a lot of work to do. With stiff competition for limited resources, as long as most ordinary people in donor countries do not know about these diseases and the means to prevent and treat them, they will never be priorities for aid funding.

Pneumonia and diarrhoeal disease between them kill more than 2.8 million young kids every year, so we'd better speak loudly and work fast!

--Doune Porter is an advocacy and communications officer for PATH's Vaccine Access and Delivery Program and GAVI's Accelerated Vaccine Introduction Initiative