STOP for World Asthma Day

May 7 is World Asthma Day, an annual event organized by the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) to improve asthma awareness and care around the world. The theme this year is STOP representing key steps in the diagnosis and treatment of the disease.

On this day, GINA encourages people all over the world to participate in activities that educate, raise the profile of asthma and fundraise. At MEDUCOM, we participated in the ‘Drawing Breath’ Competition, trying to visually depict what breath would look like if it could be seen. To ensure we maintained an appreciation of this respiratory disease, the team was challenged to do so while breathing only through the small opening of a straw.

While ‘Drawing Breath’ may have made us breathless, the dyspnea also gave us a strong appreciation of how low level symptoms (beginning with a shortness of breath) can linger and get worse (leading to the point where one struggles to breathe), characteristic of someone suffering from asthma.