In almost every area of medicine, Australians are better off than they were forty years ago - but not if they have asthma. Australia is still treating the disease the way it did in the 1980s and people are dying because of it.
Australia is failing its 2.8 million asthma sufferers. That is the stark finding of a landmark blueprint released at the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand annual scientific meeting on March 31 by some of the country's leading respiratory experts. It calls for urgent, system-wide reform of how Australia diagnoses, manages and treats asthma.
The numbers are confronting. In 2023, 480 Australians died from asthma: a mortality rate that remains high by international standards. In 2023 - 2024, the disease caused 32,000 hospitalisations, with more than 90 per cent considered potentially preventable with better community care. The health system spent $1.3 billion on asthma in that year, yet outcomes have stalled or worsened over the past decade.
"Asthma costs the health system hundreds of millions each year, particularly in primary care and pharmaceuticals, yet outcomes aren't improving.
It's time to move from outdated, fragmented care to consistent implementation of evidence-based approaches that improve health outcomes and make every dollar count."
By:Professor Christine Jenkins AM
Program Head of Respiratory Health, The George Institute for Global Health
The blueprint, A Bold Blueprint for Asthma Reform in Australia, lays bare a system still operating on clinical practices from the 1980s - some of which are now considered potentially harmful. Patients are being overtreated with outdated reliever inhalers and oral corticosteroids that cause serious long-term harm, while proven preventive treatments remain underused. Just one in four people with asthma has a written action plan. Only half had a routine GP review in the past year.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples bear a disproportionate burden, with emergency department rates 2.7 times higher and death rates 3.4 times higher than non-Indigenous Australians.
The blueprint - developed with administrative support from The George Institute for Global Health following two years of expert collaboration, stakeholder consultation and focus groups with people living with asthma - sets out five priorities for reform and a suite of actions that can be implemented now.
Key calls include restricting over-the-counter access to outdated reliever inhalers, mandating warning labels on reliever packaging, establishing team-based care as the national standard and funding a respiratory research mission with a dedicated asthma stream. The blueprint also describes the elements of an optimal asthma consultation and calls for the development of a national patient charter and nationally agreed standards of care for asthma.
Critically, the blueprint argues that a life without asthma symptoms, including remission, is now achievable for many Australians but only if the system changes.
"We now know that a life without asthma symptoms is possible.
Yet this remains out of reach for most. We can, and must, do better."
By:Professor Christine Jenkins AM
A Bold Blueprint for Asthma Reform in Australia was launched at the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand Annual Scientific Meeting in Perth on 31 March 2026. The full blueprint is available at www.futureofasthma.org
