Research targets number one killer of under-5s

Oxford researchers are developing a tool to make it much easier and cheaper to diagnose pneumonia - the number one killer of children under 5. Their latest research is published in  Journal of the   Royal Society Interface . Currently, correctly diagnosing pneumonia and understanding how severe it is requires specialist doctors and expensive equipment like X-ray machines. Neither is available to community health workers in developing nations, where 99% of the annual 1.1 million childhood pneumonia deaths happen. Elina Naydenova from Oxford University's Institute for Biomedical Engineering explained: 'With the nearest hospital hours away, generalist health workers depend on a set of guidelines known as IMCI. These can sometimes be good at identifying cases of pneumonia but not so good at screening out cases that are not pneumonia. There is also huge variability across users.