Medical experts on Saturday highlighted the lack of public awareness about Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), which has a prevalence rate of 2.1 percent in Pakistan's population aged 40 years and above. COPD is a chronic lung (or respiratory) condition affecting both urban and rural population in Pakistan.
Discussing the impact and correlation between COP and cigarette smoking, healthcare professionals said that smoking was among the most common causes of COPD, which kills as many as 3 million people worldwide every year. Highlighting the rapid increase in the prevalence rate of COPD, they feared that the respiratory disease might become the fourth-leading cause of death in the world and the third-leading cause of death in middle-income countries by 2030. They, however, said that COPD could also be caused by air pollution and exposure to biomass fuels.
In many areas in Pakistan, they said, air pollution is a problem and in some rural districts where cooking indoors with biomass fuels is widespread. Dr Ali Sarwar Zuberi, Pulmonologist, Medicine Department at Aga Khan University, who handles COPD patients explained: "The main risk factors for COPD are tobacco smoke, (including second-hand smoke), and exposure to biomass fuels and other indoor and outdoor air pollutants," he said.
Recently, a large epidemiological study called BREATHE was conducted in 10 countries of the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan in the first international collaborative attempt to document the prevalence and burden of COPD in this region of the world. The findings of the study are derived from interviews of over 60,000 respondents in the general population. This study is first of its kind to evaluate the impact of COPD and cigarette smoking in this part of the world.
A number of important findings emerge from the BREATHE Study which may promote awareness of COPD and potentially make a significant impact on the management of COPD in this region in the coming years. The BREATHE Study demonstrated that the prevalence rate in Pakistan is as high as 2.1 percent in the population aged 40 years and above. The overall prevalence in the 11 countries is 3.6 percent.
The report also mentioned that smoking "is a major and growing public health issue in the country". According to the study, cigarette smoking rate in Pakistan is 15.1 percent. A gender-wise break-up of data showed that 30 percent men and 2 percent women were found involved in some form of smoking. Dr Ali told this correspondent that most patients were still not receiving a diagnosis because general practitioners did not have access to spirometry equipment or were not adequately trained. "There are a number of different treatments available depending on the severity or stage of COPD and it is important that new treatments are made available to those who need them," he maintained.
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