July 03, 2018
Spring exercise plan for better breathing
The Asthma and Respiratory Foundation is urging people to take up exercise so they can breathe better.
It will run its Breathe Better Challenge for the third time in September to raise awareness and funds for those living with a respiratory illness.
Chief executive Letitia O'Dwyer says that includes a disproportionate number of Māori, who have hospitalisation rates 2.4 times higher than other groups and asthma rates 3.4 times higher.
It's not helped by the poorly-insulated homes so many whānau live in.
"It's really frustrating for our respiratory physicians who work in the emergency departments to have little children over-represented in Māori coming into the hospital with things like pneumonia and respiratory diseases and then going back into a damp home and coming back into the hospital and boomeranging backwards and forwards and that is incredibly frustrating for them," Ms O'Dwyer says.
The Breathe Better September challenges will be hard put to beat the fundraising efforts of asthmatic Scott Donaldson, who last night became the first person to kayak solo across the Tasman, reaching the shore at Ngāmotu Beach in New Plymouth at 8:44pm two months after leaving Coffs Harbour in New South Wales.
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