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About 334 million people worldwide suffer from asthma, and this figure may be an underestimation. It is the most common chronic disease in children. Asthma is among the top 20 chronic conditions for global ranking of disability-adjusted life years in children; in the mid-childhood ages 5-14 years it is among the top 10 causes. Death rates from asthma in children globally range from 0.0 to 0.7 per 100 000. There are striking global variations in the prevalence of asthma symptoms (wheeze in the past 12 months) in children, with up to 13-fold differences between countries. Although asthma symptoms are more common in many high-income countries (HICs), some low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) also have high levels of asthma symptom prevalence. The highest prevalence of symptoms of severe asthma among children with wheeze in the past 12 months is found in LMICs and not HICs. From the 1990s to the 2000s, asthma symptoms became more common in some high-prevalence centres in HICs; in many cases, the prevalence stayed the same or even decreased. At the same time, many LMICs with large populations showed increases in prevalence, suggesting that the overall world burden is increasing, and that therefore global disparities in asthma prevalence are decreasing. The costs of asthma, where they have been estimated, are relatively high. The global burden of asthma in children, including costs, needs ongoing monitoring using standardised methods.

Transfer of solid food from mothers or other adults to dependent offspring is commonly observed in various primate species and both nutritional and informational benefits have been proposed to explain the function of such food sharing. Predictions from these hypotheses are tested using observational data on wild orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii) at Tuanan, Central Borneo, Indonesia. In 1,145 hr of focal observation and 458 recorded food interactions between four pairs of females with offspring it was found that virtually all transfers were initiated by the offspring and that younger infants solicited food more often and did so for a greater variety of items than older offspring. All offspring primarily solicited food that was difficult to process, i.e., inaccessible to them. Furthermore, the amount of food solicitation was negatively correlated with ecological competence. Hence food sharing seemed to be related to an offspring's skill level, as suggested by the informational hypothesis. In contrast, offspring did not solicit high‐quality items more than low‐quality items and food sharing did not peak around the age of weaning, as predicted by the nutritional hypothesis. Mothers were usually passively tolerant, allowing offspring to take food but hardly ever provisioned. Parent–offspring conflict concerning food sharing was only observed well after weaning. Thus, by taking food directly from the mother, young orangutans were able to obtain information about the affordances and nutritional value of food items that were otherwise out of their reach and could familiarize themselves with the mother's diet. In species such as orangutans or other apes, characterized by a broad diet that requires extractive foraging, informational food transfer may be vital for an immature to acquire complex feeding skills and adult diet. Am. J. Primatol. 70:533–541, 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.

Low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) bear a disproportionately high burden of the global morbidity and mortality caused by chronic respiratory diseases (CRDs) including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, bronchiectasis and post-tuberculous lung disease. CRDs are strongly associated with poverty, infectious diseases, and other non-communicable diseases, and contribute to complex multi-morbidity, with significant consequences for the lives and livelihoods of those affected.The relevance of CRDs to health and socioeconomic wellbeing is expected to increase over time, as life expectancies rise and the competing risks of early childhood mortality and infectious diseases plateau. As such, the World Health Organization has identified the prevention and control of CRDs as an urgent development issue and essential to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.In this review we focus on CRDs in low-and middle-income settings (LMICs). We discuss the early life origins of CRDs, challenges in prevention, diagnosis and management in LMICs, and pathways to solutions to achieve true Universal Health Coverage.

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