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Victorian asthma program extended nationally

8 April 2009

A life saving asthma intervention program developed by Monash University for the Victorian Rural Ambulance Service will be extended nationally after its overwhelming success in a 1-year trial.

The Ambulances for Asthma program aims to increase people's use of ambulance services for asthma incidents in regional and rural Victoria through free online resources that inform asthma patients about what to do in the case of an asthma attack.

More than 2000 Australians are diagnosed with asthma each year and the condition causes 300 deaths annually.

Rural Ambulance Victoria is responsible for the pre-hospital emergency care of 1.4 million rural Victorians.

Monash Emergency Health lecturer Leanne Boyd, who developed the program, said a high number of people with severe asthma elected to drive themselves to hospital instead of calling an ambulance.

"Some of the reasons people do not call an ambulance include a distrust of the '000' system, concerns that paramedics would be unable to locate their rural property, underestimating asthma severity and not considering asthma as warranting ambulance paramedic assistance," Ms Boyd said.

"We also discovered that some health professionals did not advise patients to use ambulance services if they needed them, and did not know what an ambulance paramedic could do for a patient with asthma."

The interactive website offers advice on when to call an ambulance, and lets people assess the severity of an asthma attack.

Following the introduction of the program, 64 per cent of participants said they were more likely to call an ambulance.

Based on this result, the Federal Government Department of Health and Ageing, through the Asthma Foundations of Australia (who administers the program), has provided a further $66,000 to allow the program to be rolled out nationally for metropolitan, rural and remote areas.