 Namaste, I'm Dr. Aileen Kinemi, pediatric pulmonologist at Manipal Hospital, Spangalore. On World Pneumonia Day, I'd like to share a few valuable insights to childhood pneumonia. Pneumonia is an acute respiratory tract infection that affects the lung. Unfortunately, it still causes a significant morbidity and mortality in children particularly less than 5 years of age. And one-fifth of the childhood mortality is still caused by pneumonia. We also know that 50% of these community-acquired pneumonias in children are in children less than 5 years of age. So what causes these pneumonias? Pneumonias are commonly caused in children by viruses. Viruses such as the common cold virus, rhinoviruses, RSV, influenza viruses, H1N1, the swine flu and even what we're going through the current pandemic COVID virus. Various bacteria ranging from streptococcus, staphylococcus, mycoplasma and many more bacteria can cause this infection. How do we recognize it as parents and caregivers? If your child has fever, difficulty in breathing, fast breathing or even has cough, some children may have pain, complaints of pain in the abdomen, in the chest and depending on the severity may also have complaints of vomiting, not able to feed excessive crying and of course respiratory severe respiratory failure in few. The most important and the key component to managing a childhood pneumonia is please take to your regular doctor or your regular pediatrician at the earliest. The most common and the most key factor that we need to understand is that early recognition and your history and a clinical diagnosis by a clinician is the key to recognizing the pneumonia, managing it early and averting all the complications that come with pneumonia. How do we treat this pneumonia? Very often and most commonly it is caused by viruses. It requires supportive management for viral induced pneumonia and for the bacterial pneumonia we need antibiotics. Even the antibiotics have to be the correct dosage for the correct duration and it has to be properly administered and be counter-checked about whether the child is improving with those given antibiotics. How do we prevent this common mnemonias? We all know that your child needs to be given the primary immunization series which will cover the most common causes of these mnemonias, most common pathogens causing these mnemonias, particularly the etching fluency, the pertussis vaccine, the pneumococcal vaccine, viral vaccines of influenza and the measles. Hence, it's imperative that as parents and caregivers you understand this entity, recognize it early, meet your clinician as soon as your child is unwell and get the appropriate management and treatment for your child. Thank you.