Medical researchers use the socio-economic status (SES) to determine health and nutritional status, mortality and morbidity. The accessibility, affordability, acceptability and utilisation of health facilities are directly related to SES. The Asthma Epidemiology Study Group discovered that the overall prevalence of the allergy in India is 2.38 per cent—2.28 per cent in Chandigarh, 1.69 per cent in Delhi, 2.05 per cent in Kanpur and 3.47 per cent in Bengaluru. According to a research paper ‘General practitioners’ knowledge of childhood asthma in Delhi, India’, the diagnosis and treatment of asthma is “a sensitive issue”. Medical investigation has been limited in India. Most such reports reveal “marked deficiencies in knowledge and inadequacies in treatment practices of asthma among general practitioners”.

In the past decade, the number of children affected with various kinds of nasal blockage and sneezing has gone up. The proportion of Indian schoolchildren suffering from bronchial asthma had increased to more than double in the last 10 years and reached the highest-level ever. The Indian Journal of Community Medicine reports that while the rate of bronchial asthma was low (up to 3.3 per cent ) in children surveyed in Lucknow, Ludhiana and Punjab, in Delhi it was 11.6 per cent. Youth and middle-aged Indians are prone to chest and lung infections. The most affected are patients above 40 years of age. A 2006 study conducted in a rural block of Haryana by the Department of Community Medicine of Pt B D Sharma PGIMS, Rohtak, records that smoke from tobacco or fuels become major asthma irritants. The report says, “Children (0-5 years) represent the largest subgroup of the population susceptible to the adverse health effects of air pollution. Air pollution causes irritation or inflammation that’s more likely to obstruct narrower airways. Further more, exposure to a pollutant triggers an asthma attack due to the sensitivity of a child’s developing respiratory system. In India, paediatricians face a common problem of bronchial asthma among children. Globally, many studies have been conducted but no epidemiological study defined the magnitude of the problem of asthma among children.”

The study shows that children of low SES families are the worst affected by indoor pollution. This causes a large rate of absence from school, affects families which require their assistance at work, and decreases the quality of their life. Air pollution is one of the primary causes of bronchial asthma cases and asthma aggravation anywhere in the world. In India, the effective treatment of bronchial asthma in children is dependent on by “cultural beliefs, poor socio-economic condition families, and use of alternate medicine”. Reduction in the indoor smoke causes a significant decrease in bronchial asthma in children.