Key Recommendations

The World Health Organization (WHO) should

ensure that asthma and other chronic respiratory diseases are included as a priority in the outcome document of the 2018 United Nations (UN) High Level Meeting on non-communicable diseases (NCDs);
develop and disseminate training manuals for asthma management for low-and middle-income countries (LMICs); ensure essential asthma medicines are added to its Prequalification Programme;
promote the harmonisation, across international reference pharmacopoeias, of quality requirements that govern the production and testing of asthma medicines;
facilitate the development of independent laboratories for the testing of generic products that are not already approved by a stringent regulatory authority or relevant global mechanism.

include asthma in all their actions resulting from the WHO Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of NCDs 2013-2020, and the WHO NCD Global Monitoring Framework;
ensure their country has a coordinated national strategy towards better measurement of the true burden of asthma, improving access to care and improving adherence to asthma management strategies;
aim to achieve the UN Strategic Development Goal 3: “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages” to lessen the burden of asthma;
ensure that essential asthma medicines are on their country’s Essential Medicines List and ensure that they are free, subsidised or reimbursed; develop and implement insurance schemes which will allow patients to access and buy asthma medicines;
strengthen their national policies, such as those to reduce tobacco consumption, encourage healthy eating and reduce exposure to potentially harmful chemicals, smoke and dust;
support further research into known asthma triggers and identifying the causes of asthma;
commit to research that increases the understanding of asthma, its causes, its costs, and lead to improvements in management;
support the acquisition of new standardised data to track the country and global burden of asthma.

collect counts of hospital admissions for asthma among children and adults from defined catchment populations, to monitor trends in asthma over time;
report national rates of asthma deaths in children and adults to monitor progress in asthma care, and as an early warning of epidemics of fatal asthma;
monitor the availability and costs of asthma medicines;
develop new ways to target and deliver asthma care in diverse health systems and contexts, and assess their cost-effectiveness, affordability and feasibility;
in LMICs recognise asthma as an important public health issue, include asthma in all their actions and set up a national programme to improve asthma care and limit costs.

encourage patient advocacy to improve asthma outcomes;
support the government in developing asthma guidelines which are adapted to the national situation;
actively participate in improving asthma programmes by assisting in improving correct inhaler technique and adherence to treatment;
ensure that their country joins the Global Asthma Network.