Asthma sufferers fight for breath
Annual campaign focuses on awareness and improved care
By James Saoulli for CNN
(CNN) -- It is a time to take a breath and reflect.
Each year, asthma affects as many as 300 million people worldwide and kills more than 180,000, according to international health organizations.
In Western Europe alone, one person dies every hour as a result of asthma.
The economic costs associated with asthma are estimated to exceed HIV/AIDS combined, says the World Health Organization (WHO).
Equally worrying is that asthma rates have been rising worldwide.
"The number of asthmatics has leapt by over 60 percent since the early 1908's and deaths have doubled to 5,000 a year," according to WHO.
In Western Europe, cases of asthma have doubled in 10 years, says the UCB Institute of Allergy in Belgium.
This week marks the start of an awareness campaign aimed at raising awareness of asthma and improving the quality of care for sufferers around the world.
World Asthma Day, organized by the Global Initiative for Asthma, has been an annual event since 1998. This year, the campaign kicked off on Tuesday.
Asthma is a lung disease that commonly causes respiratory discomfort such as breathlessness, wheezing, chest tightness and coughing.
"In the most extreme cases, the airways can become so inflamed and restricted that people are left fighting for breath," says the European Federation of Allergy and Airway Disease Patients Association (EFA).
WHO describes this condition as an "inflammation of the air passages in the lungs and affects the sensitivity of the nerve endings in the airways so they become easily irritated. In an attack, the lining of the passages swells causing the airways to narrow and reducing the flow of air in and out of the lungs."
About 90 percent of asthma attacks are triggered by allergic reactions, particularly to indoor allergens -- such as dust, pets and pollens, WHO says.
Tobacco smoke, pollution, and chemical irritants in the workplace are also "additional risk factors," EFA says. Other risk factors are certain drugs, the weather, extreme physical expression and physical exercise, according to WHO.
"Yet their suffering is often unnecessary," says Svein-Erik Myrseth, EFA president.
Myrseth says 90 percent of asthma deaths could be prevented "through increased public awareness, better access to appropriate healthcare provision, changes in environmental and healthcare policy and improvements in research."
