Asthma Awareness
Ask About Asthma
There are over 240,000 children and young people with asthma in London. Over 4000 are admitted to hospital with asthma every year with 170 being severe enough to require intensive care. 12 children and young people die from asthma each year and most of these deaths are entirely preventable.
In September 2017, to coincide with the start of the new school year and the highest hospital admission rates for asthma (week 38), Healthy London Partnership and NHS England (London) launched a public awareness campaign called #AskAboutAsthma. The campaign aims to encourage small steps to help improve the quality of life for children and young people living with asthma in London. Below is an outline of the campaign aims and the ways that you can help.
The #AskAboutAsthma campaign aims for:
- Each child to have an asthma management plan
- Each child with asthma to be able to use their inhaler effectively
- Each child to have an annual asthma review
As part of the campaign, individuals are asked to make a My Asthma Pledge, to help support children and young people with asthma by describing their own or organisational contribution to improving asthma care. All pledges to support the campaign are visible on the My Asthma Pledge page and if you could tweet a photo of you/your organisations pledge using the hashtag; #AskAboutAsthma with our handle: @healthyLDN, that would be wonderful. Pledges can be to support improvement in asthma care or to reduce individual contribution to air pollution.