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.

“He wrote back saying the matter was being looked into. That’s the only response I got,” he recalled yesterday.

While Government target areas, such as heart disease and cancer were showing real progress, respiratory disease continued to be ignored. About 1,400 people die from lung cancer every year and it has one of the highest mortality rates; the five-year survival rate is very poor for both men and women.

“There is now screening for breast cancer. We can’t treat lung cancer, never mind screen for it,” he said. “If you go to any hospital’s accident and emergency department where there are people lying on trolleys, you can be sure that between a third and a half of them will have a respiratory illness,” said Prof Clancy.

He also believes that medical experts were not doing enough to highlight respiratory illness and what could and should be done to treat it. “Clearly, we would prefer to prevent lung disease and the anti-smoking campaign is the best way to do that, but a lot of people are ill and they need to be looked after.”

Irish Asthma Society administrator Herman O’Brien said 400,000 people in Ireland suffered from asthma.