Dr. Soliman Fakeeh Hospital marked the World Asthma Day on Saturday with the aim to raise awareness of asthma and improve asthma care.

Top physicians and consultants attended the event. Growing participation in the event every year has made it one of world’s most important asthma awareness and education events.

Giving details of the event, Dr. Mohammed Majid Barzanji, respiratory allergies and asthma consultant at the hospital said the events included a discussions and lectures on asthma.

He said it is reported that the number of asthma cases in the last decade have increased by 300 percent. The main objective of the establishing of events is to increase awareness of the disease, especially in this society, where an estimated 1.5 million people are suffering from asthma, and the cost of treatment is about one billion dollars per annum.

The organizers conducted an awareness campaign to familiarize the community with asthma, its cure, and correlation with dust and smoke, the key causes and methods of prevention, as well as the most prominent discoveries in asthma disease.

Several speakers at the event explained precautionary measures to be taken and to reduce the spread of the disease among young and old individuals.

The experiences of many hospitals and international centers specialized in the treatment of such diseases were also reviewed in addition to many workshops and extensive discussions, on the most recent and modern treatments in the field of asthma.

A number of people visited the event and were enlightened about asthma and the precautions they needed to take particularly in Saudi Arabia where the dusty weather makes many people prone to asthma and other respiratory infections.

In 2013 a research led by Mohammed Al Ghobain, a pulmonologist at the King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Riyadh revealed alarming figures of asthma cases worldwide.

Saudi Arabia took the lead, with a rate of 24 percent of the population suffering from asthma. In a previous research, Qatar and Kuwait came next, with a rate of 19.8 and 16.8 percent respectively, followed by the United Arab Emirates with 13 percent. Oman had the lowest prevalence among the Gulf Cooperation Council with a rate of a little more than 10 percent. Some 235-300 million people worldwide suffer from asthma which, if uncontrolled, can be fatal.

According to a report published by the Annals of Thoracic medicines in 2012 It is one of the most common chronic diseases in Saudi Arabia, affecting more than 2 million Saudis.