JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
It's called the silent epidemic, and it's sweeping countries in Africa. Researchers have found that millions of teens across the continent are likely suffering from asthma without receiving any treatment. NPR's global health correspondent Fatma Tanis reports.
FATMA TANIS, BYLINE: There hasn't been a lot of data available on how prevalent asthma is in Africa. So epidemiologist Gioia Mosler and her colleagues at the Queen Mary University of London decided to investigate.
GIOIA MOSLER: We wanted to find out how many adolescents, especially, have asthma and kind of also wanted to find out about the burden - what does it mean for them.
TANIS: They surveyed 20,000 children in six countries and then conducted rigorous lung function tests. They found that 1 in 8 children had symptoms of asthma, but most of them had never been diagnosed.
MOSLER: They were suffering from asthma symptoms, often severe, but no doctor had diagnosed them with asthma. So they're not getting any medication, they're not getting any treatment, any doctor's visits, and they just basically suffer through it by themselves.
TANIS: A third of those undiagnosed children researchers found were not doing well in school. They were missing classes, had trouble completing exams and couldn't play sports. And when researchers scaled up the numbers, Mosler says they found it could mean that around 15 million children across the continent have undiagnosed asthma symptoms.
Dr. Tesfaye Mersha studies asthma at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. He says the disease has been a growing issue in Africa over the last three decades, and it's linked to climate change and changes in lifestyle - like more people living in cities, breathing in dust and polluted air. And he says a disease like asthma is a new challenge across the continent.
TESFAYE MERSHA: The infrastructure and nongovernmental organization are always working in terms of infection, not for this kind of new epidemic.
TANIS: Mersha says what's happening in Africa is similar to what happened in the U.S. in the 1900s, when infectious diseases were seen as the biggest risk to public health, but non-communicable diseases like obesity, diabetes, asthma were, in fact, growing threats.
MERSHA: I grew up in Ethiopia, and when I grow up, nobody heard about Type 2 diabetes. Now it becomes really frequently people talk about it and that comes with a lifestyle and environment we live in, especially with urbanization.
TANIS: But he points out that the Global South has more obstacles ahead of them.
MERSHA: People live in a very remote area. There's no access to health care facility. So I think the problem in Africa is unique than in the western countries because the infrastructure is also very limited.
TANIS: There needs to be more studies in Africa, he says, to come up with the right solutions. Fatma Tanis, NPR News.
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