Health Secretary in the Limelight

Health Secretary Alan Johnson gave a speech on health inequalities and asthma this morning, to the Fabian Society, which has been influential in putting the issue firmly on the Government’s agenda.

He started with a ‘call to arms’ on children’s asthma, recognising the inequities that children face within schools and the NHS. He had clearly read our report for World Asthma Day and listened to the patients he met at the Brompton and he explicitly acknowledged that asthma is one of the leading causes of hospitalisation of children.

Mr Johnson said that ‘local health agencies and schools must improve the management of childhood asthma to help children lead full and healthy lives.' In addition, he said that ‘as part of the Child Health Strategy, the Government is looking at how schools and early years settings can better support children with long-term conditions such as diabetes and asthma’ and promised that ‘a Best Practice Guide for Children's Asthma is being developed which will help support local services by ensuring that children have improved access to high quality services close to home, and with rapid access to more specialist expertise when needed.’

Finally, he promised that Primary Care Trusts are being encouraged to make better use of the data on the treatment of asthma - a disease information management tool that has been developed enables them to analyse how many emergency bed days are attributable to asthma attacks, and use this information to plan better services for patients. And adult asthma will be one of the focus areas of the national strategy on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which is due to be published later this year.

This is as far as I have heard a minister go in acknowledging that we need to improve services for people with asthma. It’s not an acceptance of our case for national standards, but it is progress and a good agenda to be working on.

Meanwhile, today is the day Asthma UK staff are all wearing lime green to put asthma in the limelight. It is a wonderful sight. Tonight we have a comedy night and quiz in aid of the charity’s work. Hundreds more events are happening across the country, so we are raising vital funds and raising awareness of asthma too.
 

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