I’m totally stealing this idea from…..um……myself (can you steal from yourself?) over at BellaOnline, where I’ve simultaneously posted the same, slightly modified information this morning.
Numbers sometimes tell the story better than words can and I know the higher-level mathematicians out there would probably argue with me, but numbers are also more simple and clear-cut than the ins and outs of this crazy disease. Just so long as we don’t get any higher than college algebra, when math concepts enter those abstract realms I just can’t wrap my brain around. Ideas are for words, not numbers, my mind tells me.
But think about these numbers for a minute. Your kid, like mine, may have already turned the corner in her asthma care and will with a little luck not return to her earlier severity. The tragedy of asthma isn’t in my daughter and her particular case but in the 8,999,999 other U.S. children like her.
And it’s also not in the proportionally small number of asthma deaths per year. It’s in the fact that even one death from asthma is too many.
The Numbers
22+ million Americans have asthma.
12+ million school days are lost to asthma every year.
14+ million work days are lost to asthma every year.
Almost 4,000 people die from asthma every year.
Asthma spending exceeds $16.1 billion every year.
Sobering, isn’t it?
Less grave are all the positive research results this year that will someday open up new options for asthma sufferers. Maybe my daughter won’t ever see an asthma vaccine in her lifetime, but her children might. 2007 also brought new initiatives for asthma treatment centers and citywide programs, all of which fight this epidemic.
Want to read more about this year’s fight against asthma? Check back tomorrow for my entirely subjective list of the Top Asthma Stories for 2007.
Numbers in this post taken from The American Lung Association.
