A medical expert, Dr Soji Ige has said that the increase in the rate of asthma in United States of America by 8.2 per cent was a reflection of the asthma epidemic in other continents of the world.
In a reaction to a survey by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention which found that the rate of asthma has slowly rising, Dr Ige declared that all over the world, asthma was becoming more common and severe in nature.
Asthma involves chronic attacks of impaired breathing. Asthma symptoms include coughing, wheezing, and chest pain. Also, asthma can be fatal.
According to Dr Ige, a recent hospital survey conducted in Nigeria over a seven-year period, which evaluated the changes in prevalence of symptoms of asthma, found that cases of wheezing had increased significantly in the 13 to 14-year age group.
He remarked that although there was no clear explanation for the apparent surge in cases of asthma and its severity, the trend could possibly be ascribed to a general improvement in living standard and "doctors are looking for it more and are better at detecting it".
According to this hypothesis, "the decrease in the incidence of childhood infections following improvement in hygiene and standard of living would stimulate the immune system in the direction that would enhance the development of asthma and other allergic states, rather than in fighting one infection or the other."
The release by The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, stated that in the United States, the incidence of asthma had risen by around 1.2 per cent per year since 2001, with asthma attack prevalence staying between 3.9 per cent and 4.3 per cent between 1997 and 2009.
Among children and adolescents, boys have a higher prevalence than girls as well as among women than men. And it's more likely to affect children, blacks and people living below the poverty level.
Currently, at least 300 million people worldwide have asthma and it is projected that the number would increase further by another 100 million by the year 2025.
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"...although there was no clear explanation for the apparent surge in cases of asthma and its severity, the trend could possibly be ascribed to a general improvement in living standard and "doctors are looking for it more and are better at detecting it".
It's always the same excuse 'doctors are better at detecting it' rather than an increased incidence.
How about this from 2005:
"From Azerbaijan to Nigeria, pharmaceutical companies are increasingly shifting clinical trials to emerging markets--as much as 40% of all drug trials this year, according to several pharmaceutical executives, up from about 10% in 1999. And they are doing it by outsourcing many of those trials to contract research organizations, which in turn subcontract the work of finding patients to people like Dr. Karlov. Merck's Vioxx and Zocor were tested in Russia and other developing countries, as were many of Pfizer's billion-dollar drugs, before gaining approval in the U.S. While the vast majority of the trials are conducted without problems, there have been enough instances of ethical abuse and breakdowns in the scientific process to cause concern. A lawsuit still making its way through U.S. courts alleges that Pfizer tested a meningitis drug on Nigerian children in 1996 without their consent, resulting in five deaths. And there have been charges over the years that other trials have endangered patients or have been conducted without proper ethical review (see box, "When Trials Go Bad"). "
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