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New report calls for improved severe asthma care

By NiPI - 01st Jan 2025

A new report from the Asthma Society of Ireland, entitled: ‘Towards optimal severe asthma care’, has gathered together the perspectives of people with severe asthma, as well as those of specialist nurses and doctors, to convey the complex challenges faced in Ireland.

Approximately 450,000 people in Ireland currently have asthma, which is the most common chronic respiratory disease in the country. It is estimated that between 3 and 10 per cent of this patient population has severe asthma.

The delayed diagnosis and treatment of patients, the financial pressure on both a personal and State level, and the lack of awareness of severe asthma as a distinct and debilitating disease, are just some of the challenges highlighted in the report.

Key findings include:

  • 40 per cent with severe asthma struggle with day-to-day house chores;
  • 69 per cent reported that severe asthma affects their ability to exercise;
  • 56 per cent visited the emergency department at least once in the last
    12 months;
  • On average, people with severe asthma visited their GP seven times in the last 12 months;
  • The average wait for a diagnosis in Ireland is six years.

Asthma Society of Ireland Chief Executive Eilís Ní Chaithnía described the report’s publication as “an important step not only in rectifying the shortcomings of severe asthma care in Ireland, but also in giving voice to people who for a long time have been suffering in silence with little recognition”.

She noted that asthma can sometimes be “dismissed as a trivial illness”, and warned that for severe asthma patients, in particular, “this couldn’t be further from the truth”. Ms Ní Chaithnía also asked the Government to implement recommendations from the report “as a matter of urgency”.

Recommendations include:

  • Multi-annual funding for the establishment and maintenance of a severe asthma registry;
  • An increase in the allocated funding for biologic treatments;
  • The HSE to progress the implementation of standardised care protocols;
  • Funding for dedicated self-management education and supports for severe asthma patients;
  • A benefit-cost analysis of full subsidisation of asthma medication, in particular combination inhalers.

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