Asthma Statistics

A survey regarding asthma statistics, carried out in the mid nineteen nineties estimated that the cost of asthma and asthma symptoms to the economy of the UK approached a staggering three quarters of a BILLION pounds. This cost was borne out by the National Health Service, The Department of Social Security (in invalidity payments), together with absenteeism through asthma and consequently the loss of productivity. Some asthma statistics: (i) Asthma is a 21st century epidemic. (ii) 150 million asthma sufferers worldwide. (iii) 5.1 million asthmatics in the UK. (iv) 1 in 8 children and 1 in 13 adults suffer from asthma in the UK. (v) UK has the highest incidence of childhood asthma in the world. (vi) Every 4 minutes in the UK a child suffering asthma symptoms is admitted to hospital. It has to be said that some of those are truly startling asthma statistics.

A range of asthma research has given us asthma statistics to support that over the last few decades there has been an increase in the prevalence of asthma and asthma symptoms. Many of the studies have investigated asthma symptoms in children in various parts of the developed world. Within each locality, the better studies, have tended to use the same questionnaire for the asthma statistics, and have been applied to children sampled in the same way but after a time interval. There are asthma statistics that give evidence that changes in medical practice and in awareness of the disease of asthma by doctors, patients and the general public alike has been responsible for an increase in hospital admission rates from asthma, and probably also in the recognition of asthma and its symptoms. However the consensus of opinion is that changes in medical practice or perception do not account for all the apparent increase in prevalence of asthma - i.e. some of the increase is "real" although perhaps not as great as some of the crude data might initially suggest.

Some other notable asthma statistics: Asthma is widespread, 5.1 million people have asthma in the UK – 1 in 5 households is affected by asthma or asthma symptoms, and if you don’t have asthma yourself, you will know someone who has! Asthma is serious. One person dies every seven hours from asthma in the UK, yet experts compiling asthma statistics tell us that 90% of these asthma deaths are preventable!