Today marks World Asthma Day. Organized and sponsored by the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA), World Asthma Day is a partnership between health care groups and asthma educators to raise awareness about asthma and improve asthma care throughout the world.

This year’s theme for World Asthma Day is “You Can Control Your Asthma.” A person’s asthma is under control when he or she has:

  • No (or minimal) asthma symptoms
  • No waking at night due to asthma
  • No (or minimal) need to use “reliever” medication
  • The ability to do normal physical activity and exercise
  • Normal (or near-normal) lung function test results (PEF and FEV1)
  • No (or very infrequent) asthma attacks.

On World Asthma Day 2010, GINA launched a global campaign to encourage governments, health departments, and health care professionals to improve asthma control and reduce asthma hospitalization by 50% by 2015. This year, GINA will begin the next phase of the Asthma Control Challenge with the GINA Hospitalization Survey, an online data collection system, that will help provide a baseline and benchmark for progress in the campaign. The survey will allow countries around the world to track their progress reducing hospitalizations.

The first World Asthma Day was held in 1998 and celebrated in more than 35 countries.

World Asthma Day is an annual awareness-raising event organized and sponsored by the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA). For more information please visit www.ginasthma.org//WADindex.asp.

Source: Global Initiative for Asthma