THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The tendency to neglect the health of the lung has posed a health challenge as experts find that people take medications only when the disease has worsened. According to them, most patients carry on with their cough that refuses to quieten down for weeks or months, making the treatment complicated. Often, the cough is wrongly associated with other diseases even when the underlying cause is a life-threatening respiratory illness.
The undiagnosed lung disorders affect the quality of life and increase the mortality rate. The importance of lung health was evident during the Covid pandemic which resulted in a death toll of over 70,000 in the state. Experts associate most of Covid deaths to respiratory issues.
“A look at the respiratory diseases prevalent in our society will reveal the apathy we have in caring our respiratory system. Interstitial lung disease which causes progressive scarring of lung tissue has become more common nowadays. Still, people carry on with their dry cough and shortness of breath while exerting for months.
It is mostly detected when the lung is almost fully damaged. The same is the case with the cough associated with lung cancer, the top killer among cancers,” said said Dr P S Shajahan, professor of Pulmonary Medicine at Government TD Medical College, Alappuzha, and president of Academy of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine.
The spectrum of respiratory disease ranges from acute illness, such as pneumonia or lower respiratory tract infection, to chronic diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD. The causes range from genetic to environmental factors or allergies to infections.
The experts in the field find that respiratory diseases have received less attention than other prominent non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or cancer. According to Dr Shajahan, the arrival of CT scan and other diagnostic tools has helped in finding more patients.With the attention shifting to Covid, tuberculosis (TB), a potentially serious infectious disease that kills just under 2,000 people in the state every year, cases have increased.
“Testing at healthcare facilities is conducted on symptomatic patients. However, there are a lot of people who are asymptomatic and also have TB. In the pursuit to eliminate the disease, it is critical to identify high-risk populations and carry out ‘active case finding’ drives to screen vulnerable communities and initiate timely treatment for those diagnosed with TB,” said Sriram Natrajan, director, CEO and founder, Molbio Diagnostics.
TB CASES SAW 5% INCREASE LAST YEAR
The number of TB cases reported showed a 5% increase in 2021 compared to the previous year. It is evident that the state could not meet the lofty target of TB elimination by 2025.
HOW DANGEROUS RESPIRATORY DISEASES ARE
Respiratory diseases comprised three of the top 10 causes of death and resulted in 80 lakh deaths worldwide in 2019: WHO