On April 26, 2010 The Boston Globe posted an article by Stephen Smith entitled "Scourge of asthma is acute in N.E." It is reporting the fact that asthma, a chronic disease, should be a relatively easy to tame or control but has complications due to economic, social, and environmental forces.Through a telephone survey that reports people's overall health, in 2001 about 1.2 million New Englanders had asthma but by 2006, it had grown by 100,000. It still remains a mystery as to why New England has a higher incidence of asthma than the rest of the country, but specialists have theorized that cold weather keeps families inside old houses vulnerable to asthma triggers including things such as dust mites, cockroach droppings, and mold.
Dr. Brugge, a Tufts University School of Medicene professor who studies asthma in Boston neighborhoods said that "There are people who don't have the proper medications. There are people who have the proper medications but aren't using them properly. There are people who are properly medicated bu have not controlled environmental exposures." With this being said you can see where there are complications; some people can't afford medication or the high copayments and some people don't have money to take out carpets that harbor mites or mold that trigger asthma's onset.
The connection I made between this article and class is the fact that although there is treatment available, not everyone can take it. Although this was the case with polio, they raised money and funded so that anyone that was infected would be treated. Asthma isn't as bad as polio in the sense that you don't become paralyzed but it may be really harmful depending on how severe you have it and what triggers it.
I can connect to this article because I had asthma when I was really young but then it seemed to have gone away. When I visited Sri Lanka in second grade, the environment and my surroundings triggered the asthma again so I now have to use an inhaler. It is also worse in the cold weather and especially winter in comparison to the summer or spring.
This article is eye opening because I didn't realize that inhalers and medication for asthma was unaffordable because it seems to be a common issue amongst people. I also didn't realize it could be triggered by certain things and be so severe that people have to go to the ER. When asthma effects me it feels like my chest is closing in and I don't even have a bad case of it. This makes me wonder how it feels to have such a bad case that you have to go to the ER.
There is no tension or controversy in the article.
This article can be found at http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2010/04/26/scourge_of_asthma_is_acute_in_ne/?page=full .
Great article Desh!
ReplyDeleteI thought this article was very interesting and I like how you were able to relate it to certain things we talked about in class. I can also relate to this article because I have asthma, which I just got a few years ago. I knew that asthma is a big issue and that a lot of people have it but I didn't realize how severe a lot of people have it. The article mentions people often going to hospitals or missing school or work because of their asthma and that really surprised me. I feel as though it can be controlled better but as the article mentioned, there are complications. Like Desh, I have a mild case of asthma and when it is triggered my chest feels like its closing, which makes me curious as to how the people with severe cases of asthma feel.