19 September, 2025
An editorial authored by ERS leaders calls for health systems to prioritise and integrate the care of chronic respiratory diseases (CRDs) across Europe.
The article, published in the European Respiratory Journal (ERJ), emphasises that to alleviate the burden of respiratory diseases, focus must be shifted from reactive treatment to proactive prevention of CRDs, particularly among policy makers.
It also lays out the ways in which the root causes of disease should be addressed, and the roles that all stakeholders in respiratory medicine – including healthcare professionals – can play in reducing the burden of CRDs.
The editorial has been published following the release of the first-ever joint ERS/WHO Europe report into CRDs in Europe, which was presented in June at the ERS Presidential Summit on Prevention in Dublin, Ireland.
The CRD report emphasised that in the WHO European Region, CRDs are vastly under diagnosed, poorly managed and significantly underestimated in their impact on health systems.
Why do we need to focus on prevention?
Prevention measures are the most effective way to reduce the overall burden of illness and alleviate the strain that CRDs place on health systems across Europe.
In the ERS statement, Prof. Silke Ryan (ERS President), Prof. Monika Gappa (ERS Past President) and Prof. Babara Hoffmann (ERS Advocacy Council Chair) emphasise that:
- CRDs are directly responsible for 400,000 premature deaths in Europe each year;
- According to the Global Burden of Disease Report 2021, 81.7 million people live with a CRD in the WHO European Region, representing a prevalence of 6.8%;
- Widespread inequality still exists across Europe with the diagnosis, monitoring and reporting of diseases;
To compound these problems, a huge discrepancy remains between the health burden of CRDs and the societal and political response: just 0.1% of the EU’s budget is dedicated to CRDs.
Mitigation and prevention of CRDs is achievable
However, the article outlines the ways that the burden of CRDs could be mitigated using holistic prevention strategies, including:
- Primary prevention – such as avoiding risk factor exposures
- Secondary prevention – accelerating access to screening, early diagnosis and treatment
- Tertiary prevention – enabling state-of-the-art chronic disease management while also taking into account quaternary prevention to reduce the unwanted side effects of treatment
Emphasis on policymakers – but health professionals have a role to play, too
In addition to calls for action on CRD prevention at policy level, ERS also aims to empower respiratory professionals to implement prevention measures in their day-to-day work, and to advocate for prevention.
Respiratory professionals can also access a toolkit on communication of the WHO/ERS Report into CRDs as well as a slide set which summarises the WHO/ERS Report.
The toolkit and the slide set summarise what the report means for respiratory professionals and the ways they can add their voices in advocating for prevention of CRDs across Europe.