2012 set to be an important year for people with asthma

Asthma UK's Chief Executive, Neil Churchill

Neil Churchill - Chief Executive

The National Review of Asthma Deaths will begin work in February and will help us identify the clinical factors and failures in care that lie behind many preventable deaths. In Finland, there are only six asthma deaths a year – meaning the UK sees 20 times as many deaths, per head of population. Our hope is that 2012 will be the year the tide begins to turn.

Also in 2012, NICE will begin work developing quality standards for asthma. This is something we have campaigned for over several years and means there will be a benchmark against which to measure good quality care. The NHS’s own Atlas of Variation shows significant unwarranted variations in asthma outcomes. The quality standards should help us to improve standards.

And it will be an active year for Asthma UK too. We will pursue our campaign to allow schools to keep emergency reliever inhalers for the use of any pupil with asthma. A child is hospitalised every 17 minutes because of an asthma attack and a failure to act can leave teachers vulnerable. The idea that schools should keep reliever inhalers is supported by leading doctors, has been shown to work in practice and can be made a reality by ending the red tape that stops schools acting sensibly.

In 2012, Asthma UK will also fund new Fellowships, at least one Senior Postdoctoral Development Award and at least one Clinician-Researcher Development Award. These awards will support the careers of the world-leading researchers of tomorrow and play a critical role in allowing new discoveries and new treatments to emerge. We will also fund Priority Needs Grants into important areas of asthma research that have been neglected in recent years, usually because other funding has not been available.

These are just some of our plans and I look forward to sharing news about them with you as we move through the year. In the meantime, I wish you all a peaceful Christmas and an asthma-friendly New Year!

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yvonnatownsend

9 January 12
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Keep up the good work lets hope you gain success. My son has had asthma since he was a baby and spent lots of time in and out hospital for long periods of time. He does not like people to notice him with his inhalers and therefore will not ask his teacher when he needs it. I asked his teacher to keep a special eye on him explaing this and the reply given was "well if he needs is he must ask!". My reply was " by law I have to send my child to school the least I can expect is that he is given proper care" and asked for a copy of their policy on asthma...........swift call back from the deputy head who admitted they did not have one! One very distressed mother on their hands and I subsquently learned that the next teacher training day included a visit from the Asthma nurse!!!!!!!! RESULT...... but in all honesty it should not have taken me to push them for this it should be standard practice really incorporating such training whilst training to be a teacher.

lynseydm

9 January 12
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Pleased to hear something is being done about the schools, my son had an attack at school and the teacher made him walk to the office to get his inhalor, he ended up hospitalised for a week. The schools response was Diabetes is more important. Fingers crossed this is all sorted soon as.

angievere

6 January 12
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Pleased to hear AUK is campaigning for schools to keep inhalers. My experience is that most school staff are not aware of the potential seriousness of asthma. I often think of poor school boy Samuel Linton who died from a severe attack due to the complete disregard by school staff. An absolute tragedy and sadly I am not convinced it couldnt happen again (if it hasnt already). Good luck to AUK in all its work.

aniechacon

2 January 12
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Gussypoo

24 December 11
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Should be interesting in seeing how the emergency services claim that their response is ..... Substandard is my experience.

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