This November 20, 2013 marks the date of the 12e World Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (or COPD) Day. For the twelfth year in a row, French pulmonologists will take advantage of this “breath day” to alert smokers (because they are the ones who are mainly affected by chronic bronchitis) on the risks involved and on the signs that should alert them about the disease.
If most smokers are not afraid of COPD, it is because they often imagine that the disease, which was once called emphysema, mainly affects the elderly. However, COPD affects people from their forties and affects more than 3.5 million French people. “In developed countries, like ours, women are now as affected as men” underline Inserm researchers who point out that COPD is today the 3e cause of death in Europe. According to WHO projections, the total number of COPD deaths is expected to increase by more than 30% over the next ten years.
An Opinion Way survey commissioned by the Breath Foundation as part of World COPD Day shows that despite information campaigns organized for 12 years around World Day, COPD and its causes are still unknown to the general public. Only one in 10 people know the disease and among those who do, only one in three cites tobacco as the main risk factor, pollution being the most often cited factor. “This is why our 2013 information campaign called” Respiratory disease that kills slowly “in a deliberately provocative tone to emphasize the root cause of the disease: tobacco smoke” explains Professor Bruno Housset, Vice- President of the Fondation du Souffle and head of the pneumology department at the Créteil hospital center.
COPD is the second respiratory disease (after asthma) in France: one in 20 adults suffers from it without necessarily being diagnosed. It manifests as a slow and progressive obstruction of the airways and lungs, with a decrease in expiratory flows. Currently, it cannot be cured, but early treatment can slow the progression of the disease.
One of the striking results of the survey presented on the occasion of this day is that young people aged 15-25 have virtually no idea about the disease. However, it is at this age that we start to smoke. “We must explain to them that at a not so distant date, in their forties, their respiratory capacities will already be greatly reduced. And to the elderly, it should be remembered that stopping smoking is always beneficial: let’s avoid wasting what it is. we still have to live! ” concludes Dr Bertarnd Herer, head of the pneumology division of the Bligny hospital center (91)
Discover, on the site of the foundation of the breath, the different information campaigns on COPD carried out today in the French departments.