November 20: World COPD Day-marked by WHO

November 21, 2019

The WHO (World Health Organization) and Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) organizes World COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) Day on the third Wednesday of November every year. It was first launched in 1997 by WHO, GOLD and other institutes in the US. This year the day is marked to create awareness in the

Theme: All Together to End COPD

Significance

COPD is currently the fourth major cause of death in the world. Diagnosing COPD condition is hard and is considered of the majorly under-diagnosed disease. Often the disease is confused with Asthma.

With increasing pollution, it is essential to create awareness about COPD among the public. Experts believe that COPD is likely to increase in the coming years with increasing pollution.

Creating awareness about the disease also becomes important as it is not curable but is preventable.

India

India has to increase its awareness campaign on COPD for two reasons namely pollution and smoking. India is home to 3 of the 10 highly polluted cities in the world according to the Skymet report. It includes Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. According to WHO, 12% of world smokers are from India.

In India the prevalence of the disease has increased by 29.2% between 1990 and 2016 according to the International Journal of Pulmonary and Respiratory Sciences. The highest incidence of the disease in the country is in the states of Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.