The scientific journal Clinical Infectious Diseases has released its March Special Supplement focusing entirely on the research design of and pilot data from the Pneumonia Etiology Research for Child Health (PERCH) Project, which seeks to identify the causes of pneumonia among the world's most vulnerable populations. PERCH, led by the International Vaccine Access Center (IVAC) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in collaboration with 7 research centers worldwide, is the largest and most comprehensive study of the etiology of childhood pneumonia conducted in more than 20 years. Pneumonia is the leading cause of death among children under age five, but while the disease is easy to recognize, the causes of pneumonia, which claims the lives of approximately 1.6 million children each year, are not.
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