Asthma – a disease we have become ‘cavalier about’

A report commissioned by the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation New Zealand released in May showed that 70 people died from asthma last year.

Close to one in four Whanganui children are medicated for asthma, one in five in Gisborne, Taranaki and Wairarapa, and one in every six in the Hutt Valley.

When the report came out, the deputy dean of the Dunedin School of Medicine, Jim Reid, said asthma was so common that ‘‘people have become a bit cavalier about it’’.

Treatments for asthma had not radically changed since the 2000s, Reid said, and there were a small number of asthmatics whose symptoms could not be controlled.

Reid pointed to the case of Ethan Kowalewski, a 10-year-old who suffered amassive asthma attack in Hawera on December 18. The boy died in his mother’s arms two days later in Starship children’s hospital in Auckland.

Ethan’s mother, Rachel, handed her son his inhaler and raced him to hospital in December, when he began experiencing an attack, but doctors could not save him.

‘‘But provided people take their medication,’’ Reid said, ‘‘I think a great majority of those 70 deaths could have been prevented.’’

Unlike the Kowalewski family, many asthma sufferers simply did not seek help, he added.

‘‘If children are appropriately treated, then their chances of recovering from the disease are higher.’’