Approximately 2.3 million people in Romania are diagnosed with chronic respiratory disease, rector of the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy (UMF) Viorel Jinga, told the conference „Lung Health, social impact” on Wednesday organised as part of the World Lung Day 2024 events by UMF and the Romanian Society of Pulmonology.

„I’m say this in an extremely worrying national statistical context in which we find a coefficient of over 8% of the Romanian population recorded as suffering from pulmonary diseases, with approximately 2.3 million people being diagnosed with chronic respiratory disease,” Jinga said.

He underlined the importance of developing medical prevention in the Romanian educational system. In his opinion, information and awareness campaigns are needed for young people about the impact of risk factors on lung health.

„Alone or in association, the genetic background, smoking, infections, but especially pollution and stress, preponderant risk factors in the 21st century, lead every year to the appearance of millions of new cases of respiratory diseases.”

„The burden of these diseases is not accounted for just by emotional and psychological factors that patients and their caregivers go through, but also by financial imbalances caused by very high costs of treatment of these diseases, as well as by other costs generated on the labour market, by putting human resources into inactivity and allocating considerable funds to these patients as a result of sick leave. (…) During the pandemic, pollution decreased, respiratory diseases were also rarer.”

AGERPRES