World Lung Day 2024—Clean air and healthy lungs for all

Being part of the Forum of International Respiratory Societies (FIRS), the Asian Pacific Society of Respirology (APSR) is keen to support FIRS in international activities, including the 2024 World Lung Day. FIRS promotes advocacy and activities on global lung health issues through support for the annual World Lung Day and also the various designated World event Day on Respiratory Health issues. This year, FIRS has set the theme ‘Clean Air and Healthy Lungs for All’ for World Lung Day on 25 September 2024. To pave the way for this theme, FIRS has already highlighted it through the following activities this year. On World No Tobacco Day 2024 (31 May), FIRS took on the first and foremost initiative to act against tobacco as the leading threat on respiratory health. While we are fighting against traditional cigarettes smoking, newer forms of tobacco products are emerging, including electronic cigarettes, herbal cigarettes and heat-not-burn cigarettes and so on. All these newer forms of cigarettes are packaged to attract a wider market of consumers, luring children and young people into this harmful habit of smoking or vaping. There are increasing evidence shows that these newer tobacco products constitute gateways to nicotine addiction and the initiation of smoking among youth, giving high odds of turning youngsters into chronic smokers.1 As the tobacco industry is expanding propaganda targeting population of all ages and all walks of life, we also need to emphasize the adjustment of anti-tobacco strategy towards no smoking to maintain respiratory health for all, through all possible means. Stopping both traditional cigarette smoking and newer forms of tobacco smoking, imposing necessary regulatory and taxation policy against tobacco products and giving strong and firm education on harmful effects of all tobacco will reach our next generation and enabling clean air for all populations. On 1 July 2024, it was through the World Bronchiectasis Day that FIRS worked with global chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and bronchiectasis societies to raise awareness, share knowledge and discuss ways to reduce the burden of bronchiectasis for patients and their families worldwide. Bronchiectasis is not often given enough health care attention in the past, resulting in an increasing health burden created by its co-morbidities, namely asthma, associated respiratory infections with chronic pyogenic or mycobacterial diseases, and COPD.2 Bronchiectasis causes significant respiratory morbidity and mortality through infective exacerbations, which implies further link with microbiological and antibiotics resistance as a population health care burden.2 With advancement of CT techniques, the diagnosis of bronchiectasis has become standardized and protocolized, yet the issue of scan availability especially in low- to middle-income countries, and hence health care accessibility and equity, would be a concurrent issue that warrants attention and proper resolution. With the emergence of more prevalent non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) in patients with bronchiectasis, more research is needed to fill knowledge gap in bronchiectasis and related respiratory infections.2 Knowing that the development of bronchiectasis is usually the sequelae of respiratory infections at a young age, commonly tuberculosis or pneumonia in childhood or teenage years, it is important to raise the awareness of bronchiectasis and respiratory infections for all. On 1 August 2024, FIRS supported the World Lung Cancer Day emphasizing the importance of early detection and equity in access to diagnose and treat lung cancer. Lung cancer remains the top cancer killer for most parts of the world. The poor prognosis in the past was mainly the results of late presentation with asymptomatic disease and diagnosis at relatively advanced stage. There is, however, increasing evidence that lung cancer screening for at risk population enables lung cancer detection at earliest possible stage where it is completely resectable and thus curable, that is, the stage shift phenomenon with lung cancer disease detected at much earlier stages compared to the past when lung screening efforts were not in place. While the benefits of lung cancer screening for subjects of appropriate age (50–80 years old) and heavy smoking history (more than 20 pack-year) has been established, the cost-effectiveness of lung cancer screening in non-smokers, which is more common in Asian populations, warrants further research.3 A side but important issue would be the availability of standard low-dose CT (LDCT) for appropriate subjects for lung cancer screening, and again a health care equity and accessibility issue that warrants further resolution.4 The World Lung Day 2024 should remind us all on the necessary sustained efforts from all stakeholders and endusers to ensure clean air and good respiratory health for everyone. This is exactly matching with the aims of FIRS and APSR in professional academic and health care advocacy activities for clean air and respiratory health, disseminated via Respirology. As always, APSR and her en bloc membership societies (including Bangladesh Lung Foundation, Hong Kong Thoracic Society, Indonesian Society of Respirology, Japanese Respiratory Society, Korean Academy of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases, Malaysian Thoracic Society, Mongolian Respiratory Society, Philippine College of Chest Physicians, Singapore Thoracic Society, Sri Lanka College of Pulmonologists, Taiwan Society of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Vietnam Respiratory Society) will align respiratory health care and advocacy activities with FIRS and WHO in full support of the World Lung Day 2024—Clean Air and Healthy Lungs for All. David C. L. Lam is an Editorial Board member of Respirology and was excluded from all editorial decision-making related to the acceptance of this article for publication. The other authors have nothing to disclose.