Two major chronic lung diseases asthma and COPD kill
nearly 4 million people worldwide annually. Lead
researcher
calculates that 3.2 million people died in
2015 from .Asthma caused another 400,000 deaths.
While asthma is more common, COPD is much more
deadly. And while both conditions can be treated,
many people remain undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. In
addition, in many countries, treatment, if it exists
at all may be at insufficient levels. Although much
of the burden is either preventable or treatable
with affordable interventions, these diseases have
received less attention than other prominent
non-communicable diseases like cardiovascular
disease, cancer or diabetes, said report lead
researcher. Smoking and air pollution are the
leading causes of COPD, the lead researcher noted.
The causes of asthma are less certain but are
thought to include allergens and smoking. One expert
in respiratory health agreed that both diseases take
a heavy, but treatable, toll on health. Asthma may
be fairly easily controlled and even reversed with
medications, while COPD is also treatable. Lung
damage is permanent and the natural aging process of
the lung is the progressive or accelerated loss of
alveoli. So the decline in lung function is
life-long, whereas asthma does not have this issue.
Overall, the diseases have become less common and
less deadly since 1990 when judged by rates. But
absolute case numbers worldwide have gone up because
there are more people in the world and more elderly
people, too. The lead researcher found that COPD hit
these countries the hardest: India, Lesotho, Nepal
and Papua New Guinea. Asthma was an especially high
burden in these countries: Afghanistan, Central
African Republic, Fiji, Kiribati, Lesotho, Papua New
Guinea, and Swaziland. Indoor cooking fuels like
"biomass" materials, such wood and coal, for example
remain a major source of respiratory illness in
poorer nations. The use of these cooking fuels is
one of the greatest causes of air
pollution
resulting in a high burden of
morbidity and mortality. To reduce household air
pollution, a switch to cleaner fuels would be
desirable. However, this change is not always
possible due to financial or logistical constraints,
especially in urban slums. Interventions aimed at
replacing smoke-generating cook stoves with cheap,
cleaner-burning devices would go a long way toward
cutting the burden of asthma and COPD worldwide.
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