A specific Exemption Code. This is the goal of petition launched over 8 months ago byAssociation Breathing Together-APS to ask the institutions to declare severe asthma as a disease differentiated from asthma. Because being able to promptly diagnose severe asthma allows patients to return to an acceptable lifestyle, without excessive and avoidable daily sacrifices.
According to theWorld Health Organization (WHO) There are between 100 and 150 million people suffering from asthma worldwide.
SOnly in Italy there are about 3 million asthmatic patients of which 300 thousand are suffering from severe asthma, that is, from that form of asthma in which control is not obtained or is achieved with maximal doses of therapy. One third of these patients are under the age of 14. In all those suffering from severe asthma there is a low quality of life, in the youngest the loss of work and school days, the difficulty of doing sports and physical activity.
A SIGNATURE AND A VIDEO TO CHANGE THE SCENARIO
The Association Breathe Together-APS, since its establishment, has severe asthma as one of its priorities and from September 2020 to promote a campaign to obtain a targeted intervention of the institutions.
In conjunction with World Asthma Day (May 5), the petition will be re-launched from the Association’s website, also making use of a video realized in collaboration with the # TELOSPIEGO® project
“We ask the institutions for the recognition of severe asthma as a distinct disease and therefore for the assignment of a Code of Exemption other than asthma, which includes a wider range of free diagnostic and therapeutic services – he explains Simona Barbaglia, President of the Association Breathing Together-APS and mother of an asthmatic boy – in such a way as to be able to prevent chronic conditions, promptly diagnose the disease and guarantee adequate therapies and pulmonary rehabilitation.
Using the name given to the disease might suggest that severe asthma is a simple one variant – certainly more disabling – than the asthma that afflicts millions of Italians in our country, but this is not exactly the case.
“Severe asthma is characterized by the persistence and severity of symptoms, despite the correct therapy with the drugs necessary to ensure control of the disease such as inhaled steroids associated with long-acting bronchodilators, used in patients with severe asthma at maximal doses. In these patients – explains Gianna Shirts, Coordinator of the Scientific Committee of the Respiriamo Insieme-APS Association, Associate Professor of the University of Florence, Head of the Severe Asthma Unit of the Careggi University Hospital of Florence – the use of systemic corticosteroids is frequent, the lack of control of the disease which always remains symptomatic and the severity of symptoms themselves often require access to the emergency department. “