In a recent TED Talk, “Let's talk crap. Seriously.”, UK-based journalist Rose George discussed the significance of sanitation and the lack of access to toilets as a root for larger public health problems around the world.

Today, the WHO and UNICEF released The Integrated Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Pneumonia and Diarrhoea (GAPPD), an integrated and intensified effort to reduce deaths and illnesses from these diseases.

When discussing public health campaigns and disease prevention, most people want to immediately jump to the solution – we want a vaccine, a cure, a narrative – so we can stop the cycle of disease and suffering. But we must remember to crawl before we walk, and this cliché could not ring more true than in the world of disease monitoring and surveillance, particularly for a disease like pneumococcal, a deadly bacterial infection that kills more than 1.6 million people annually, including half a million children.

Around the world, more than 800,000 children die each year from childhood pneumonia. 99 percent of these children are living in developing countries.