Home treatment with oral antibiotics for children ill with severe pneumonia can be just as efficient as hospital care with intravenous drugs, as advised by the World Health Organization, researchers at Boston University School of Public Health said Thursday.

The World Health Organization advises that health workers refer children with severe pneumonia to a hospital to receive intravenous antibiotics. In many poorer, developing nations, children are sometimes unable to reach a hospital or their parents cannot afford the treatment, the researchers said.

In such cases, home treatment would be a cheaper, more comfortable and just as efficient way of taking care of the little patients.

Pneumonia is one of the world's leading child killers, particularly in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, according to statistics. About 2 million of the 10 million deaths which occur annually in children under age 5 around the world are caused by pneumonia.

The illness, which consists in an inflammation of the lungs, has symptoms such as coughing, chest pain, fever and difficulty in breathing.

The authors of this study, published in the British medical journal The Lancet on Friday, hope that their findings will encourage the WHO to change its recommendation of hospital treatment for severe pneumonia in children in developing countries.

Researchers at the Boston University School of Public Health conducted a study which involved more than 2,000 children with severe pneumonia, under age 5, who arrived at hospitals in seven locations in Pakistan, reports Reuters.

The authors wrote that about half the children who came to one of the hospitals were sent home, where they received an oral antibiotic, amoxicillin, in syrup form. The others were treated intravenously in the hospital with an equivalent antibiotic, ampicillin, reports Reuters. The selection was random.

In the end, the researchers found that of the five children who died within 14 days of entering the study, one was treated at home, the other four at one of the hospitals. Of the hospitalized children, 87 did not respond to treatment within a week, compared to 77 among those who received home care.

The authors believe their study shows treatment at home for severe pneumonia in children is just as effective as receiving treatment in a hospital, just as safe and significantly less costly.

The researchers also noted that there is one extra advantage: treatment with antibiotics avoids the potential risk of infection which accompanies administering intravenous drugs.

Dr. Shamim Qazi, medical officer with WHO's Department of Child and Adolescent Health and Development and a co-author of the study, told the Boston Globe in a telephone interview that the organization would convene a group of specialists in the following months to consider revising its guidelines for treatment of pneumonia.