Factors Affecting the Rate of Pediatric Pneumonia in Developing Countries: a Review and Literature Study

Millions of children less than 5 years old die from pneumonia globally and about 75-70% of these deaths occur in infants. Persian and English articles of International and National databases such as “WHO, Scopus and the Cochrane, Pub Med, Science Direct, Wiley, Google Scholar, SID, Iran Medex, Magiran, Med Lib and Iran Doc were searched from 1970 to 2014. The factors such as low birth weight, malnutrition, lack of breast feeding, micronutrient deficiencies, smoking tobacco, kindergarten and maternal education are the most important factors affecting the rate of pneumonia in developing countries. Actions such as nutritional interventions develop effective strategies on abstinence of smoking, promote the knowledge and practice of mothers about proper care of infants could have a significant effect on the reduction of morbidity and mortality of pneumonia in the infants.