UK has second highest lung disease rates in Western Europe

According to a study from a new charity called Asthma and Lung UK (ALUK) the UK have the second-highest rate of lung illnesses, Turkey being the highest per capita.

ALUK chief executive Sarah Woolnough described the death figure of 500,000 people who died as a result of a lung condition in the UK over a seven-year period as a “national scandal”. She went on to say “The state of lung health in the UK is shameful, with the numbers of hospital admissions increasing, and air pollution causing people to develop lung conditions or making existing ones worse.”

Although the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has advised that air pollution has decreased since 2010, their aim is to make it a clinical priority to improve the lives of those living with lung conditions.

The NHS long-term plan, which was published in 2019 wanted to make lung disease an objective so that the outcomes for patients in England with lung conditions would be either the same or better than comparable countries. This has yet to be achieved.

Excluding the Covid-19 pandemic, prior to 2019 according to an academic study, admission rates to UK hospitals were almost doubled from 1,500 to 3,000 in the last 20 years for people suffering from lung conditions and it is the third biggest killer in the UK.

Sadly, deprivation, poor quality housing, air pollution and smoking all contribute to the 36,000 deaths per annum in the UK.

Amanda Cavanagh, a medical negligence specialist at Ashtons Legal, says: “It is of concern that despite the assurances by the NHS and the DHSC lung disease continues to be a massive issue. Premature deaths could be avoided with better investment in housing and greener fuels, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. It is shocking that with the health system we have, we are so far behind other countries in preventing lung-related deaths”.