Karl Hofmann, President and CEO of Population Services International (PSI), recognized ten of 2011’s top global health achievements in a recent article on Huffington Post. The International Vaccine Access Center (IVAC) was proud to see that pneumonia made the list at number nine: Investment and action in pneumonia prevention and treatment saves lives. A new report by IVAC showed that great progress is being made to speed vaccines to countries where the pneumonia death toll is highest, despite urgent need to scale up key pneumonia prevention and treatment interventions. Some highlights from IVAC’s Pneumonia Progress Report 2011 are below.

I must admit, I’m still fairly new to IVAC and to the kind of work we do here. A year and a half ago I worked in a lab, and the only contact I had with the outside world was when the FedEx delivery man would drop off a batch of new samples. Now I collaborate with doctors and other scientists halfway across the world. Specifically, I work in India, and I’ll tell you that at least as far as public health is concerned, 2012 is off to a good start:

For six months now, we’ve been visiting schools across Bangladesh to talk about pneumonia as part of Save the Children’s EVERY ONE campaign. We’ve been to schools in the middle of bustling Dhaka, schools surrounded by rice paddy fields and schools nestled among hilly tea plantations. The common denominator in all these schools is Pneumonia – nearly every classroom has one or two children who’ve suffered from the disease. The sad thing is that for every child who had pneumonia and recovered, two other children probably never got the proper treatment.

On a bright August day in 2008 as I rode a small van home, I had a quiet epiphany to myself. I was tired from a hard day’s work and sweaty from the heat of the day – but I was happy with what I’d accomplished and was enjoying the view out my window: a yellow-orange sunset highlighting the greenery of the mountainside I was slowly climbing and the entire sprawling valley below.