Asthma monitoring in Australia has received a $600,000
kick-start with the establishment of the Australian Centre for
Asthma Monitoring (ACAM) -- a collaborating unit of the
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
The Centre will be based at the Institute of Respiratory
Medicine, Sydney, and is the focus of a Commonwealth Department of
Health and Ageing initiative to establish a national system for
tracking the disease.
'The prevalence of asthma in Australia remains one of the
highest in the world. Some estimates suggest more than 2 million
Australians are affected by it', Health Minister Senator Kay
Patterson said today.
'And although deaths from asthma have fallen in the past decade,
we still have unacceptably high death rates, especially in the
older age groups. Asthma is also a major reason for health care
visits and lost productivity.
'This is why the Commonwealth and State and Territory Ministers
for Health named asthma as a National Health Priority Area, and
established a National Asthma Reference Group to oversee efforts to
combat the disease.
Director of the new Centre, Dr Guy Marks, said 'At ACAM, for the
first time, we will be able to analyse, centrally, data from
sources throughout Australia to provide greater insight into
various aspects of the disease.
'There is an array of data being collected in Australia, but we
need to standardise it and make it more comprehensive in some areas
so we can make better use of it.
'Our first job, in fact, is to define what constitutes a case of
asthma-should we count all people who have ever wheezed or only
those with more frequent or severe wheezing and shortness of
breath?
'We will be working with Commonwealth, State and Territory
government bodies, academic institutions and non-government
organisations in following up areas such as underlying trends in
death rates, hospitalisations, emergency room admissions, user
prescriptions, GP visits, and the impact of asthma on people's
quality of life.
'Intensive analysis of the data will help us to better assess
the effectiveness of current asthma control and management
strategies, and allow us to measure the burden asthma places on the
community,' Dr Marks said.
Director of the AIHW, Dr Richard Madden, said the $600,000 would
fund ACAM for an initial 18 months, bringing together the asthma
and epidemiological expertise of the Institute of Respiratory
Medicine and the statistical expertise of the AIHW.
ACAM's first major report on asthma will be published in April
2003.
7 May 2002
Further information: Lucy Williams, Australian
Centre for Asthma Monitoring,
tel. 0403 753 028 (mobile)