Dear Global Asthma Network colleagues and friends,
I hope that you and your families are keeping well and safe. The Covid-19 pandemic and its recent delta variant are a threat to us all. At the same time as countries like mine are moving towards a 90% double vaccination target, the African continent has only enough vaccines for 5% of its people; large inequities are deepening. In these immensely difficult times it feels like a miracle that we are able to connect with you and it is a privilege to work with you.
I am delighted to congratulate Professor Chen-Yuan Chiang (Taiwan) and Mr Elvis Ndikum (Cameroon) on their achievements (pages 2-3)
We are delighted that GAN Phase I is flourishing with its first publications on time worldwide trends on asthma in The Lancet and on rhinoconjunctivitis in Paediatric Allergy and Immunology. More global papers are following. Congratulations to all collaborators who are involved in these papers, and thanks to the data centres in London and Murcia. Papers are being published by local or national collaborators on their own data - 12 so far (see pages 4-5) – more congratulations. There are lots of good things going on.
Preparation is well underway of the next Global Asthma Report (GAR) to be launched in 2022. There are 18 chapters that have been submitted and are being edited. There will be lots of new information and perspectives.
High quality photos are vital for GAR 2022. Thank you very much to those of you who have already sent in photos. However, we still need more. The specifications for photographs are included on page 5 in this newsletter.
The Steering Group meet annually, but since 2020 we have met by zoom with 4 meetings of 2 hours duration each, over a month. The meetings started on 1 November 2021 and in our next newsletter will inform you of the main outcomes.
We encourage you to keep sending us GAN related publications so that Eamon Ellwood can put these in the searchable GAN website library www.globalasthmanetwork.org/publications/publications.php
We thank you all for your input into GAN and hope that the year ahead is kind to you and your families.
With all best wishes from the GAN Global Centre.
Innes
Professor Innes Asher ONZM
Chair of GAN
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