Prevalence of childhood asthma and control in children assessed in a pilot school‐based intervention programme in Singapore

Abstract

In Singapore, poor asthma control is found in a sizeable proportion of school children with asthma, is identifiable for high-risk groups of children from lower socio-economic backgrounds and having asthma-related attendance at the emergency rooms.

Asthma Control and Care Among Malaysian Primary School Children: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…This is similar to other studies and has demonstrated poor asthma control among children, with the percentage of reported asthma symptoms ranging from 26% to 97.5%. 5,7,8,[15][16][17][18] These wide variations in the control of asthma among children could be due to different settings, populations, methods, and criteria used to define asthma control. For example, a study in 12 countries in Asia has reported inadequate asthma control in 97.5% of the children.…”

“…15 In Singapore, Yang et al has reported approximately a quarter of school children with asthma were inadequately controlled. 8 The number of children with asthma included in that study was small (175), and only students of primary 1 and 6 were involved. Furthermore, the assessment of asthma control was based on the presence of asthma symptoms in the past 1 year.…”

“…3,4 Children with uncontrolled asthma have a high risk of poor health outcomes such as frequent asthma exacerbations, repeated emergency room visits, hospitalization, activity limitation, and school absenteeism. [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] The Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) guideline since 2009 has recommended classifying the clinical characteristics of asthma control into controlled, partly controlled, and uncontrolled asthma. 13,14 However achieving good asthma control in children is a major challenge.…”

“…Some studies have shown the level of asthma control among children was poor. 5,8,15 A study in 12 countries in Asia has reported 97.5% of children aged under 16 years has partly controlled or uncontrolled asthma. 15 In Victoria, Australia, 13.5% of primary school children had 1 to 3 episodes of wheeze per year, and 11.9% of children had sleep disturbance in the past 1 year.…”

“…7 In Singapore, 26.3% of school children were reported to have inadequate asthma control. 8 In Malaysia, the multi-centered Third National and Health Morbidity Survey had showed that 32.1% of children had visited emergency departments due to acute asthma exacerbations and 81.7% had unscheduled visits to the doctors for asthma exacerbations. 6 Although the assessment of the level of asthma control using criteria recommended by GINA 13,14 has been widely used to guide asthma management in clinical practice, there is a lack of published data using this assessment among primary school children in Malaysia.…”