Pneumonia kills 16 per day in Portugal

By TPN/Lusa, in News · 29-01-2020 16:17:00 · 1 Comments

Common pneumonia kills at least 16 people a day in Portugal and on average more than 11,000 people a month in Europe, according to international and Portuguese data.

At a time when a new coronavirus has killed more than 130 people in China in one month, data published nationally and internationally show that there are more than 400 deaths from pneumonia in Portugal every month on average in the adult population.

Respiratory diseases in Portugal cause around 40 deaths per day, with almost half of the 13,000 deaths per year being caused by pneumonia, a community-acquired and potentially curable disease, the vast majority being bacterial pneumonia.

The most recent report by the National Observatory on Respiratory Diseases, pointed to more than 14,000 deaths from respiratory diseases in Portugal, and the number rises to more than 17,000 if deaths from tracheal, bronchial and lung cancer are added.

In the European panorama, Portugal appears as one of the countries where most people die from pneumonia, a disease that in Europe kills around 140,000, according to data from the OECD - Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

In addition to leading to the death of 16 people every day in Portugal, pneumonia is responsible for over 80 daily hospital admissions.

Deaths from pneumonia mainly affect the elderly, and in more than 90% of cases patients are 65 or older, according to the National Observatory of Respiratory Diseases.

Since 2015, respiratory diseases have been the third cause of death in Portugal, after cancer, being responsible for 19% of all deaths.

Influenza led to the death of around 3,000 people in Portugal in the 2018/2019 flu season alone, according to official data from the National Institute of Health Dr. Ricardo Jorge (INSA).