Chronic lung health record as State fails to tackle crisis, says expert

IRELAND has one of the worst records in Europe for lung health because the State has refused to give respiratory illness the priority it deserves, a medical expert said yesterday.

This is the situation despite the fact that more people die from respiratory diseases such as lung cancer, asthma and pneumonia in Ireland than in any other European country, apart from Britain.

According to the European Respiratory Society’s European Lung White Book, the death rate from respiratory diseases in Ireland is twice the EU average. Consultant respiratory physician Prof Luke Clancy said lung cancer was ignored when the Government appointed the National Cancer Forum tasked with developing a new national cancer strategy in 1996. Prof Clancy, who was president of the Irish Thoracic Society at the time, wrote to the then Minister for Health, Michael Noonan, asking him why no respiratory specialist had been appointed when the commonest cause of death from cancer was of the lung.