ABSTRACT
The prevalence and incidence of allergic diseases are on the rise both in developed as well as developing countries.1 The specialty poses different sets of challenges and opportunities in polarized locations in the USA and India. In the USA, there are nearly 6000 qualifi ed allergy specialists serving a population of around 300 million resulting in an ideal ratio of 1 to 50,000.2 In India, on the other hand, there are around 400 allergy specialists (50 percent self-trained) serving a population of 1 billion people, resulting in a ratio of 1 to 2,500,000. This is an astounding difference in the availability of manpower between the two large economies. The major issue in the developing and under-developed countries is the lack of trained technical and medical personnel. On the other hand, the pharmaceutical industry has provided all essential medications in most of the developing countries. Although there are well-established guidelines to follow, unfortunately these are not observed and this has resulted in huge morbidity and expense to the economies.3,4 There are major differences affecting the style of care rendered to patients between the eastern and western hemispheres as outlined below in this chapter.
