Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) in association with Chest Research Foundation (CRF), Pune and Narayana Health, Bengaluru is set to launch a Certificate Course for management of COPD and Asthma cases from next month. The initiative is with the intention to train the general physicians on a regular basis to handle patients suffering from chronic lung diseases and associated complications.

The eight months certificate course, divided into 8 modules, will be coordinated by PHFI. The course, designed by CRF and Narayana Health (NH), Bengaluru, will be conducted at weekend once a month at 25 centres across India including Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Patna, Ranchi, Ahmedabad, Gurgaon, Guwahati, Mysore, Mangalore, Aurangabad etc.

The certificate course will be conducted by 25 faculties, all of them pulmonary specialists, trained by CRF. MBBS, MD, MD in pulmonary medicine and can attend the course by paying Rs.10,000 fees. On completion of the course, the participants will be awarded certificate by PHFI. Initially 20-25 doctors will be trained at each centre. 500 doctors are likely to be trained in the first round by the end of 2017, informed Dr Sundeep Salvi, director, chest Research Foundation.

Asthma, called personality disorder of airways in lungs, where lungs become very sensitive or hypersensitive to some of inhaled substances like allergens, dust, pollution. The airways respond in a hypersensitive manner where they become very hypersensitive and they start contracting and don’t allow air to pass the lungs.

COPD is caused by long-term inhalation of harmful substances into the lungs - toxic gases, toxic pollutants. For instance tobacco smoke, smoke from motor vehicles, biomass smoke, smoke exposure at various occupational places like building and construction, farming, leather industry, mining that causes damage and destruction of the lungs.

In India an estimated 50-60 million people suffer from asthma and COPD. As per a large asthma prevalence study conducted across multiple centres in India, 5-10 per cent of children aged 5-6, 13-14 years are affected with asthma. An estimated 5-17 per cent of people aged 30-35 years are affected with COPD. COPD and asthma both lead to a whopping Rs.45,000 crore loss to Indian economy every year. Considering Rs.28,000 crore health budget of government of India, the losses are huge. It has huge losses from suffering and economic perspectives. COPD is the second leading cause of death in India and it has not yet received required attention, said Dr Salvi.

Medical colleges in India churn out around 350 pulmonologists per annum as against requirement of 3-4 times. It’s difficult to get that jump.

Considering the shortage of chest physicians in the country, capacity building of existing general practitioners who see an estimated 3.5 million asthma and COPD patients a day is need of the hour. Asthma and COPD are often poorly diagnosed by general practitioners due to lack of knowledge of best available diagnostic tool like spirometry. Once diagnosed, the patients are often given oral dosage of drugs rather than inhaled therapies which are considered best treatment for the chronic respiratory diseases like asthma and COPD in terms of efficacy and safety.

Inadequate emphasis on respiratory diseases in medical colleges, including lack of training in spirometry during undergraduate and postgraduate courses is a major cause of under diagnosis and poor management of chronic respiratory diseases in the country. The quality of services provided by the general physicians is weak as compared to specialists. Hence, there is a need for strengthening their competencies to effectively manage COPD and asthma at primary and secondary level. Certificate course in management of COPD & Asthma is an effort in this direction, said CRF director.

Besides this, CRF has also taken up several awareness drives on the asthma and COPD to educate people about the preventive measures. It has done research to gauge the socioeconomic burden of the diseases and the factors driving this. Its conducting training programmes for doctors to train them how to diagnose and treat asthma and COPD patients. It helps doctors diagnose patients early and treat them properly. It has trained 13,000 general physicians across the country so far.