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Although children may be thinking of Pinocchio’s pet duck, asthma patients know better. GINA is the acronym used by an organization called Global INitiative for Asthma. Their goal is the improvement of living-conditions for asthma patients world-wide and an important tool in raising awareness towards this issue is the world-asthma-day. Created by GINA in 1998, much attention will again be focused on relevant issues and concerns associated with asthma on this year’s asthma day, Tuesday, May 1st. medicalpicture® is glad to support this event with a feature series of images, animation, photos and illustrations concerning this topic.

The asthmatic constriction of the respiratory pathways, often has inflammatory causalities and is mostly a chronic condition. Generally, some kind of genetic predisposition may be found in asthma patients. Up to 5 percent of the adult and approximately 10 percent of the juvenile population are suffering from asthma. An attack may be triggered by a variety of individual factors although several factors may come together and further increase the severity of an attack. In popular media asthma is often divided into two major groups, allergy related and non-allergic asthma. Cigarette smoke is a major cause of asthmatic attacks in children.

Taking Control

One of the main goals of this year’s world-asthma-day is best described by it’s theme: “You can control your asthma”. Increasing asthma patient’s awareness to possible trigger substances will allow them to ease their condition through responsible use of, for example, tobacco products. More information concerning this topic may be found on the GINA website: www.ginasthma.com/WADIndex.asp.

medicalpicture Animation about Asthma

Weblinks
medicalpicture Asthma Feature
Asthma Bildauswahl
World Healthdays 2007
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