Why didn’t I know asthma is serious?

Neil Churchill - Chief Executive

Several people have said that to me this week. One was a mother whose daughter had been hospitalised for her asthma. Another was a mum who had experienced a bereavement.

It’s tragic that some people get the message too late to do anything about it.

Unfortunately we have some way to go to persuade people that it’s true. We recently ran some discussion groups to find out what people think of asthma. Here are some of the comments, which typified many people’s beliefs:

‘You never get anyone dying of asthma.’
‘It’s one of those things I think you grow out of, folk kind of grow out of it in adulthood. Holds you back at sports day but that’s it.’
‘It’s worrying as a parent, but it’s not worrying enough to think it’s extra serious.’

As we know, asthma is serious. Three people still die every day and 220 are admitted to hospital because of their asthma. But the message is not getting across, despite our best efforts. And we are indeed trying hard – media coverage of Asthma UK has tripled in the last three years.

One of the challenges we face is to find the right message to persuade people that the asthma we see many people coping with can still be dangerous. For the reality is that many of us who have asthma don’t take it seriously enough either.

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sparkle mum

23 August 09
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I also lost a family member to asthma.

woody-som

12 December 08
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As someone who has recently been diagnosed with asthma (at 36), caused by swimming in an over chlorinated pool, I never knew asthma was as serious as it is. When I was at school, those with asthma never did sport, but I like to swim, cycle and run, but currently find days difficult. Keeping active is actually better for you, but the weather seems to play a big part in how you suffer, and only recently did i find out that 25 people in the UK die from asthma every week. Shocking really, as it's so preventable, but where is the publicity to make the general non-suffering public aware of the facts, and more importantly, how they could help someone with a serious attack.

ClaireOB

2 December 08
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Thank you Neil - very encouraging news!

neil

2 December 08
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That's a good idea and it's one we are considering. The director of the Asthma Foundation New South Wales visited us recently and we swapped experiences. There are about 1200 asthma deaths a year, which is a reduction over last ten years but still of course too high. We need to make sure that everything that can be done is done to prevent deaths from asthma and maybe an annual audit would help us determine what more progress is needed. Currently the Healthcare Commission (in its new form post merger) is planning to do an asthma audit, which might be the best possible way to scrutinise how well services are delivering for people with asthma.

ClaireOB

1 December 08
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Without wanting to appear too morbid, I wonder if it would be worth doing as the National Asthma Council of Australia do and publish an annual update of mortality statistics, broken down by age group. My family has experienced an asthma death and there have been a few other local deaths of young people from asthma in recent years, but I still meet people who think asthma is not really a serious disease or, like your discussion participants, believe that nobody dies any more.