Lung Diseases
(asked on 28th February 2020) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of trends in the level of lung disease.
Smoking is the biggest preventable risk factor for serious lung diseases in England.
While smoking rates in England continue to decline - as a result of a comprehensive programme of tobacco control at national and local levels - alerting the public to the serious risks of smoking and supporting smokers to quit are major priorities for Public Health England (PHE) and are at the centre of the Government’s Tobacco Control Plan (TCP) for England. The TCP sets out the Government’s vision to create a smokefree generation and can be viewed at the following link:
PHE also runs a programme of smokefree marketing activity, including Stoptober. Information on the harms smoking tobacco causes is available on the Smokefree website, the One You website and via the Smokefree National Helpline. The website can be viewed at the following link:
In September 2019, PHE published the Second Atlas of Variation in Risk Factors and Healthcare for Respiratory Diseases. This Atlas has 64 indicators examining trends and geographical variation in risk factors for example smoking, trends in numbers and rates for a range of lung diseases including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, pneumonia, tuberculosis and lung cancers. The Atlas also looks at geographical variation and time trends in emergency admissions to hospital, length of stay and treatments such as that for asthma.
The rate of emergency admissions to hospital for respiratory diseases has increased significantly from 2013/14 to 2018/19.
The number of new cases of lung cancer has increased from 2001-03 to 2015-17, in both men and women. However, after adjustment for the size of the population and its age, the incidence rate of lung cancer has steadily fallen in men but risen in women.