Kolkata: World Asthma Day is an annual event organized by the Global Initiative
for Asthma (GINA) ) in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO) to increase
the awareness among public worldwide about the precautions and preventions of the asthma.It is celebrated on annual basis at 1st Tuesday of the May month. This year marks 20th
World Asthma Day. The theme of this year's event is 'Never too early, never too late'. 'It's
always the right time to address airways disease'.
The theme provides a call to action for both patients and healthcare providers worldwide
to evaluate symptoms regardless of the time point in one's life they may occur and take
actions to ensure that the asthma is controlled. World Asthma Day was first observed in
1998.
To mark this day West Bengal Chief Minister tweeted, "Today is World Asthma Day.
Asthma can be controlled. Let us pledge to curb air pollution and ensure clean breathing
air for our future generations."The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 235 million people currently suffer from asthma across the world. It is a common disease among children.
In India, around 2 crore people suffer from asthma. "India has an estimated 1.5-2 crore
asthmatics and rough estimates indicate its prevalence between 10 per cent and 15 per cent
in 5-11 year old children," says Dr MK Gupta, senior allergy and asthma specialist at AANCH Hospital.
"At present 25 per cent of population suffers from allergy in our country. Five per cent of
them are suffering from asthma and even in developed countries like USA there is 10 per
cent increase in Asthma patients every year," he added.Every year GINA organizes variety of programmes every year with the help of organizers and associates like health care groups and asthma educators to encourage and motivate common public using the sub-theme called "It's Time to Control Asthma".
GINA decides the every year's theme of celebration as well as distributes the materials
and resources to the organizers to organize programmes. Various health care professionals, members, educators and other health care organizations take part in the celebration by showing their activities related to the asthma at many public places in order to help people reducing their burden of asthma.(UNI)