Saturday, 23 April 2016

DEALING WITH ASTHMA IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES


DEALING WITH ASTHMA IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
Asthma is a chronic lung disease characterized by recurrent breathing problems and symptoms such as breathlessness, wheezing, chest tightness and coughing. The symptoms vary over time and also differ in severity from one individual to another. When it is not effectively treated, asthma often leads to hospitalization, missed work and school, limitation of physical activity, sleepless nights  and in some cases death.
This disease(asthma) was unknown 50 years ago in developing countries because many languages still do not have the words such as “wheeze” or “asthma” in their lexicon. This has added to many challenges facing the diagnosis and management of asthma. Poor healthcare facilities and shortage of healthcare personnel are problems compounded by the urban concentration of these facilities where they exist. This makes the rural and under-resourced communities bear a heavy burden of the mortality and morbidity of the disease.
There are structural barriers to reducing the burden of asthma in developing countries. This includes poverty and inadequate resources, the low priority given to asthma as a public health problem, poor healthcare infrastructure, lack of patient education, difficulties in implementing guidelines developed in weather countries, tobacco, pollution, occupational exposure, poor patient compliance etc. It is about 7.7 million people that have asthma in North Africa, while 13.7 million have it in West Africa.
Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease of the airways characterized by bronchial hyper –responsiveness and reversible airways obstruction. Through some studies and research, asthma is now considered a disease of gene-environment interaction with an intricate immunobiology.
The following are asthma triggers:
1.      Exercise
2.      Cigarette smoke
3.      Changes in air temperature
4.      Strong smells
5.      Laughing
6.      Allergens
7.      Parasites
8.      Infections
9.      Chemicals etc.
To deal with asthma, the therapy should focus on lung function parameter. Anti inflammatory therapy in the form of inhaled corticosteroids is one of the interventions.
There should be avoidance of those things that trigger them, use of Jobelyn capsules can greatly help too. Using of inhaler devices prescribed according to the patients’ condition by their doctors.
Special consideration should be given to a pregnant person who is asthmatic as well as elderly patients. Other therapy are oxygen, B-stimulants, mechanical ventilation.
Also there are different inhalation devices and techniques in asthma treatment, they are:-
aerosol delivery, pressurized metered dose inahaler(pMDIs), spacers(Non-valved and valved holding chambers), nebulizers etc.
Finally, there should be Patient Training and Education so that there would be proper adherence to avoid hospitalization.

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