Ceftriaxone Versus Chloramphenicol for Treatment of Severe Pneumonia in Children
Status:
Completed
Trial end date:
2007-03-01
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Acute lower respiratory tract infections are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in
sub Saharan Africa. The World Health Organisation (WHO) still recommends intravenous
chloramphenicol for the treatment of severe pneumonia in children aged less than five years.
However, up to 20% of children fail treatment due to the emergence of resistance by bacteria.
Several centers now use ceftriaxone, a third generation cephalosporin, which is reported to
be efficacious in the treatment of severe pneumonia. However the high cost of ceftriaxone is
too prohibitive to allow for its routine use in resource constrained countries. The purpose
of this study is to compare chloramphenicol and ceftriaxone in the treatment of severe
pneumonia in children under five.
We hypothesize that 92.7% of children who receive once daily intravenous ceftriaxone (75
mg/kg body weight)for 7 days, will recover from severe pneumonia compared to 80.2 % of those
who receive intravenous chloramphenicol (25mg/kg body weight/dose every 6 hours for 7 days).