Global Asthma Report 2026: Country Stories
The Global Asthma Network is delighted to introduce the Global Asthma Report 2026: Country Stories. This GAR builds on the special edition published in 2025 giving people with asthma from around the world a platform to tell their stories by focusing on countries. A key theme running through these countries stories is the need to address access for affordable care for everyone with asthma, resonating with the theme for World Asthma Day 2026: Access to anti-inflammatory inhalers for everyone with asthma.
Asthma continues to pose a substantial and growing global health burden. In this Global Asthma Report (GAR), we build on GAR 2025: Patient Stories, which helped amplify the voices of people with asthma around the world to present GAR 2026: Country Stories. We have perspectives from over 30 countries providing insight into the burden of disease, state of diagnostic and treatment services, access to preventative vaccines and challenges from all WHO regions.
In these stories, marked increases in asthma prevalence and striking inequities between and within countries stand out. While most people living with asthma are seen at the primary care level, in many low to middle income countries (LMICs) and high-income countries (HICs), basic tools for asthma diagnosis are not available. High asthma morbidity persists across settings, driven by delayed diagnosis, limited access to objective lung function testing, and suboptimal long-term management. Across many countries, over-reliance on short-acting beta-agonists remains common, resulting in poorly controlled disease and preventable symptoms. This is often rooted in the absence of universal health coverage and high out-of-pocket costs for inhaled corticosteroid-based controller therapies in many settings. Preventive strategies for asthma and respiratory health remain uneven and inadequate.
Together, these country stories underscore the urgent need for stronger policy action to reduce asthma inequities. Improving access to essential diagnostics and medicines, strengthening preventive strategies including vaccination, addressing environmental determinants, and ensuring resilient supply chains and emergency care systems are critical priorities. The Global Asthma Report 2026: Country Stories calls for coordinated, context-sensitive responses that place equity at the centre of asthma policy and practice. By learning from country experiences, this report aims to inform action that will reduce avoidable suffering and improve outcomes for people living with asthma worldwide.
