When two-year old Sienna Wilson suddenly developed a fever in the middle of the night the first thing her parents, Kate and David, suspected was malaria.

When the doctor arrived in the morning he agreed. He began treating her accordingly. Hours later, unconscious and in a critical condition, Sienna was airlifted to a private hospital in Lusaka. Only then was she diagnosed with pneumonia.

According to Dr Stefan Peterson, the leading expert on pneumonia for UNICEF, Sienna’s case is typical – lack of investment and the absence of any global initiatives, such as those seen for malaria or HIV, mean thousands of pneumonia cases are misdiagnosed and mistreated each year. In many of these cases the sufferer, usually a child, does not survive.

“It's a perfect storm,” says Dr Peterson. “A lack of attention from governments and global organisations, a lack of research.”

A study by the University of Southampton recently found that between 2000 and 2015 pneumonia got only 3 per cent of the research funding dedicated to infectious diseases – which is “totally out of proportion to its role as a cause of death”.