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Many Children with Asthma Undiagnosed; Institute Works to Sensitize Schools

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While attending the meeting held at Kibuli Senior Secondary School, Dr. Hellen Aanyu, a Pediatrician at Mulago National Referral Hospital said many undiagnosed children miss school unnecessarily because of failure to diagnose them early so that they are enrolled in treatment.
Students undergoing a lung function test known as a Spirometry

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Makerere University Lung Institute (MLI) has initiated school visits to educate and assess children and adolescents living with asthma. The program aims to raise awareness about how asthma manifests and to guide first aid measures to take during an asthma attack.

This comes after scientists at the Institute conducted a study that found two in every ten children aged 12 and 15 to have symptoms of the disease that often present with breathing difficulties, cough, and wheezing among others. This study was done among 895 students attending secondary school in Kampala, Wakiso, and Mukono districts.

While attending the meeting held at Kibuli Senior Secondary School, Dr. Hellen Aanyu, a Pediatrician at Mulago National Referral Hospital said many undiagnosed children miss school unnecessarily because of failure to diagnose them early so that they are enrolled in treatment.

Just at this event, the doctor revealed that they had found a 16-year-old who had never been diagnosed but had been down with asthma for two weeks. Aanyu further reveals that they established that some children with asthma are not on treatment since their caretakers live in denial yet some fear that their children will get addicted to treatment once they start using inhalers, something that she says is a false but common myth.

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According to Dr. Rebecca Nantanda, another pediatrician based at Makerere University Lung Institute, there is currently very limited information on treatment and symptom control among these children. Acknowledging the challenges of awareness, Nantanda says the perceptions about asthma and the opportunities and barriers to symptom control are not known even as this is referred to as a disease of urbanization.

Speaking on the sidelines of the awareness event, Musa Nyango a biology teacher at Kibuli Senior Secondary School said because there is no awareness in the community, they often get sick students at the beginning of senior one and senior five who have never known to be living with the disease.

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The teacher says such awareness campaigns are not just helpful with rooting out those living with the disease, but also give the school nurses, students and sufferers hints on how to handle such cases since, apart from treatment, there are a lot of lifestyle changes that can help a sufferer to live a normal life are recommended when someone is diagnosed.

Meanwhile, however, recent surveys have found that on the African continent, the number of school children with asthma has increased by over 15 million since 1990.  In Uganda, while there are no specific figures for school-going children, the general prevalence of asthma is on the increase as Ministry of Health data shows they record over 100,000 new cases each year.     

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