More and more kids falling prey to asthma in Bangalore

The number of asthma-affected children in the city has risen at an alarming rate over the last three decades. Between 1979 and 1999, the number of paediatric asthma cases rose from 9% to 29.5%. From 1999 to 2009, 25.6% of the city’s children were affected by this lung disease.

“The increase in the number of asthmatic children in Bangalore is directly related to the demographic change of the city, and partially due to saturation of genetically predisposed population,” said Dr H Paramesh, director, Lakeside Hospital. He was presenting a paper on ‘Environment pollution in our city and its impact on children’s health’ at the three-day Fifth International Conference on Children’s Health and Environment that started on Monday.

“According to some researches, it is estimated that the morbidity of non-communicable respiratory burden in India will be 57.2 million by 2016, and that of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease will be 45 million — a figure much higher than that for diseases like diabetes, ischemic heart disease and cancer put together,” said Dr Paramesh. The number of cases of allergic rhinitis had also increased, along with co-morbidities like middle ear infection and rhinitis, he said.

Presenting a paper on global environmental impact on children’s health, Peter Jon Van del Hazel, medical specialist and consultant in environmental health, Netherlands, said, “There are 2.3 billion children aged between 0 and 19 years worldwide, and over 40% of the diseases that they are affected by can be attributed to the environment.” Diarrhoea claimed the lives of two million children every year, and around 80-90% of them were due to environmental conditions, he said.