The Office of Student Affairs under the patronage of Chitkara University, Himachal Pradesh organized a webinar on the topic ‘Uncovering Asthma Misconception’ on the occasion of World Asthma Day on May 05th, 2021 from 11:30 am onward. Ms. Vaishali Naik, a senior manager at Cipla Foundation headed the webinar and shared her valuable insights on various subtopics. Ms. Naik has experience of 18 years spanning across fields like respiratory medicine with focused areas such as asthma, pediatric asthma, inhaler devices and the associated products. She emphasized the importance of creating social awareness about Asthma and improving the acceptance of inhalers. Causes, symptoms, precautions were discussed along with the importance of patient awareness as well. The session also included a question-answer round.

World Asthma Day is observed every year on May 5th and is organized by the Global Initiative for Asthma, a World Health Organization collaborative organization that was founded in 1993. The aim of World Asthma Day is to raise awareness of Asthma worldwide. WHO has recognized that asthma is of major public health importance. According to WHO, it was estimated that more than 339 million people had Asthma globally and there were 417,918 deaths due to asthma at the global level in 2016. While asthma cannot be cured, it is possible to minimise and avoid asthma attacks, which are also known as episodes or exacerbations. The theme for World Asthma Day 2021 is “Uncovering Asthma Misconceptions”. The theme calls for action to address common widely held myths and misconceptions related to asthma that prevent individuals with asthma from enjoying optimal benefit from the major advances in the management of this condition. Common misconceptions surrounding asthma include beliefs like Asthma is a childhood disease; individuals will grow out of it as they age, Asthma is infectious, Asthma sufferers should not exercise and Asthma is only controllable with high dose steroids.