ABSTRACT
Asthma in childhood is an eminently controllable, though not a curable condition in the vast majority of cases. Sadly, however, in many parts of the world it remains under-diagnosed and under-treated. Conversely, in some parts of the developed world, mild infrequent episodic disease is over-treated. In the twelfth century, Moses Maimonides, a Jewish physician and philosopher, wrote in his handbook for his patient, the Sultan Saladin’s son, ‘I have no magic cure to report. Asthma has many aetiological aspects and should be treated according to the various causes that bring it about.’1 While there have been considerable advances in the development of palliative therapies for asthma, particularly in the last 30 years, we still do not have a cure. Thus, the approach is multidisciplinary for this multifactorial condition and will involve consideration of avoidance of precipitants, attention to psychosocial factors and pharmacotherapy.
