KARACHI: 20pc children suffering from asthma, say experts
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, April 10: About 20 per cent of all children in the country are suffering from asthma, and the number of those falling victim to the disease is increasing. This was stated by speakers on the second day of a regional conference on chest diseases and tuberculosis on Sunday. The conference was organized by the Pakistan Chest Society. The exact magnitude of the problem, which could be even more severe, was not clearly known owing to lack of data since not many studies had been done about this disease, they said.
They said the disease was still treated inadequately.
Among the challenges that needed to be tackled to control the disease were propagation of guidelines and adherence to them, cost of its treatment and ‘manipulation by pharmaceutical industry’, they said.
They said pollution was the main cause of asthma.
They said though many commercial units were ready to sponsor functions to highlight the malaise of asthma, a majority of them would backtrack if anti-tobacco messages were to become part of the programme.
They regretted that the government’s indifferent attitude to checking the hazards of smoking and other factors polluting the environment was encouraging the polluters to continue to spoil the environment and affect the health of a vast majority of the population.
In this connection they demanded that the government implemented the laws strictly.
New Delhi-based G. R. Khatri said respiratory diseases in general and asthma in particular were some of the very common diseases, burdening the healthcare systems significantly.
He said the ever increasing threat of the HIV could make the tuberculosis epidemic much more severe unless urgent action was taken to check it.
He said that it was very important that general practitioners and other primary healthcare workers recognized their role in the treatment of patients with respiratory diseases. He said that DOTS was a standard of care for all TB cases, including those who were HIV positive.
Nadeem Rizvi said that prevalence of asthma and other allergic disorders had been on the rise not only in the West but also in the developing countries, including Pakistan. He said that asthma was under-diagnosed and under-treated worldwide and that the prevalence of asthma had doubled in the developed world.
Ghaffar Billo said that tuberculosis caused a major burden on the health and economics of the majority of the low-income countries, and worldwide the disease was responsible for almost 26 per cent of all avoidable deaths. He said that TB affected lungs in more than 75 per cent of cases in children.
They said it had also been recognized as a very important health issue by the World Health Organization, and a global initiative — Allergic Rhinitis and its Impact on Asthma (ARIA) — had been launched, aiming at preventing asthma through appropriate treatment of allergic rhinitis.
They said that while Global Initiative on Asthma dealt with asthma only, the ARIA looked at the progression of the allergic rhinitis to asthma. Though both initiatives ran hand in hand, ARIA was the latest concept.
Other speakers said that there was a predominance of allergen induced asthma, along with a large population of rhinitis leading to asthma, compared to non-allergic asthma.
It required better awareness at all levels of physicians to deal with the latest concepts of allergy and asthma management, rather than just management of asthma alone.
They said that the fact that allergic rhinitis and asthma coexisted (in 75 per cent of cases) and that the presence of allergic rhinitis as a three-fold risk factor for progression to asthma had been well documented globally.
Ghazala Ansari, Naeem Agha, Saulat Fatmi, Tanveer-ul-Haque, M. Hussain, Nadeem Rizvi, Nausheen Ahmad, Shakil A. Siddiqi, Javaid Khan, Zubair Shaheen, Saifullah Baig, Fayyaz Hussain, Jamal Raza, Sulaiman Haque, Mukhtar Z. Afridi, Naveed Inayat and others also spoke at the seminar attended by over 400 medical practitioners.
