Newsletters

Newsletter August 2016

Dear Global Asthma Network colleagues and friends,

It is hard to believe that nearly 12 months has passed since the last newsletter was circulated (September 2015).

We did mention in the last newsletter that we would be saying a sad goodbye to Eamon Ellwood at the end of October, due to insufficient central coordinating funding. However, due to some internal funding from the University of Auckland, he is still with us, on very reduced hours. We have been very fortunate to have him as long as we have.

Registrations from 86 centres from 34 countries are continuing to come in, although not many in the past few months. We do understand that quite a few centres have begun the fieldwork and we do hope that is going well for those centres that have started. If you have started fieldwork but not yet registered we would be grateful if you could please do so via the website. http://www.globalasthmanetwork.org/surveillance/register.php

The GAN booth at the ATS (May 2016) manned by Luis García-Marcos was very well attended (see report page 6) and we thank the ATS for their generous offer of a complementary booth.

At the European Respiratory Society (ERS) conference this year, which will run from 3rd to the 7th September. There are two GAN poster presentations: PA4186: Global asthma network identifies gaps in essential asthma medicines and PA4187: Global asthma network survey of national asthma strategies – Where are the gaps? I will be there, along with Philippa Ellwood and Luis García-Marcos from the GAN Steering Group. We would love to see you if you are attending. We suggest meeting by the Registration desk of the ERS venue, ExCel, London, on Tuesday 6th September in the middle of the day. An email will be circulated to confirm the meeting time and place.

We do encourage you to send items of interest to us for the newsletters as this is a good way of keeping in touch with each other.

Funding for the central coordination of GAN continues to be challenging, so if you have any suggestions of where to apply for funding we would be happy to hear from you.

There was a flurry of activity around World Asthma Day on 3rd May, and we have a news item from Kosovo in the following pages for your interest.

With all best wishes from the GAN Global Centre.

Professor Innes Asher ONZM
Chair of GAN

Please click on the pdf link above to view the complete newsletter.