Asthma remains the most common chronic respiratory disease (CRD) affecting children, and adolescents worldwide, and contributes significantly to morbidity and mortality. Up to 70% of mortality from Asthma and other CRD occurs in Low-and-Middle Income Countries (LMICs) due to limited diagnostic capacity and undertreatment.

Challenges facing optimal asthma care in children and adolescents all over the world, particularly in LMICs span from limited access to diagnostic facilities including spirometry to unavailability and high cost of medicines and devices for treatment of asthma.

The theme of this year’s World Asthma Day, ‘Make inhaled treatments accessible for all’ is quite apt, and highlights the dire need for concerted efforts from stakeholders and advocates of change to consciously roll out targeted interventions that will cause a paradigm shift from no or limited access to full access to inhaled asthma medicines for free or at a subsidised cost, particularly for children, adolescents, and poor adults who cannot afford them.

This is true especially in Nigeria and other LMICs, where overwhelming evidence suggests that availability and affordability of inhaled medicines for asthma remains a mirage. Even where available, the inhaled medicines and devices are largely unaffordable with overreaching catastrophic effects on the affected individuals and their families as well as the entire health systems.

Potential interventions that could reverse the existing narrative include, increasing awareness among physicians and other health care professionals about the current guideline-directed diagnosis and treatment for asthma, encouraging policy makers to formulate favorable policies that will not only limit taxation and administrative charges on these medicines at the point of importation but also to encourage local production and distribution which will further reduce the median cost for these products.

The Government is encouraged to demonstrate strong political will to foster all activities geared towards ensuring access to inhaled asthma medicines for the populace preferably for free or at highly subsidized costs in order to limit asthma morbidity and mortality.

The Paediatric Association of Nigeria lends its voice to this call for improved access to inhaled treatments for asthma for all world’s population, particularly in LMICs like Nigeria.

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