The Lung Research Foundation (LRF) was established to address the unmet needs of research and knowledge dissemination in the field of Obstructive airway diseases in India. According to the latest Global Burden of Diseases Report, 2017, India has one of the highest burden of chronic respiratory diseases. India contributes to 15.69% of Global Chronic Respiratory Diseases but 30.28% of all global deaths due to Chronic Respiratory Disease occur in India. India has the highest number of COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) cases in the world, a whopping 55.23 Million. The second-largest number of global deaths due to COPD, almost 0.85 million, occurs in India. India also leads the world in deaths due to Asthma with 43% of global asthma deaths occurring in our country. Yet awareness in the healthcare community and the public remains low about these two chronic lung conditions which cause a huge health and economic burden on our health and health care system.
Since its inception, the Lung Research Foundation has been addressing this huge burden of obstructive airway diseases in India through Research, Education and Advocacy. LRF has been involved in community-based research to understand the prevalence and risk factors of asthma and COPD from an Indian perspective. CRF is now working in collaboration with two state governments in India to conduct advocacy, generate awareness about the two obstructive airway diseases (OADs) in the community,
upgrade existing public health care systems for early diagnosis and appropriate management of OADs and also increase focus on OADs in the medical school curriculum so that young doctors learn the correct practices in OADs right from their undergraduate days. At the community level, LRF is trying to develop and validate a COPD screening questionnaire that can be administered by community health workers across India and is expected to help in the early diagnosis and referral of cases of COPD to the primary health care centre. Training of paramedical staff is also essential for comprehensive healthcare and LRF is now also focusing on developing a structured curriculum for creating trained allied health professionals who would help doctors in the management of OADs and other chronic respiratory diseases. LRF aims to make a difference through research and education.