Featured Review: Asthma education for school staff

In this blog, GP  Dr Robin Carr discusses the latest Cochrane evidence on whether asthma education for teachers and other school staff could improve the care of children with asthma in schools and reduce asthma deaths. Reposted with permission fromEvidently Cochrane blog.  “You can’t be serious, kids still die of asthma in your country?” my shocked friend said. “Actually, they still die in yours too,” I replied.I remember as a GP when I first arrived in Somerset that they were still talking about the 12-year-old child who had died from an asthma attack some years earlier. At that stage, the number of asthma deaths was about 2,000 per year and had been coming down.Preventing asthma deathsThe overall deaths from asthma have come down in the last 30 years but it still remains a common cause of death worldwide. So it was with alarm that we all read  The National Review of Asthma Deaths (NRAD) report on asthma deaths, which had concluded many are avoidable. There are added risks in low-income, minority and ethnic groups for increased asthma mortality.The most shocking of all were the numbers of children who had died from asthma: 80% of under tens had a preventable intervention that could have helped, could have prevented their deaths. Most of them had not received any medical care.There were a number of simple contributions that could have been made by the individuals themselves, through parents, schools, primary care and secondary care.  The simplest of these...
Source: Cochrane News and Events - Category: Information Technology Authors: Source Type: news