Asthma is the most common chronic disease of childhood, and yet many parents know little about it. The number of young people and children with asthma is rising. About 17 million Americans have asthma and almost 9 million children have been diagnosed with asthma at some point in their life. Nearly one in 13 school-aged children has asthma. Between 1980-1994, asthma among children under five years old increased by 160 percent.

Nearly one in five of all pediatric emergency room visits is asthma-related. This is an increase of approximately 45 percent in the past decade (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).

Asthma attacks contribute to parents making nearly a million emergency room visits every year, which accounts for half of the $2 billion cost of treating children with the illness.

Asthma is an illness in which the airways become blocked or narrowed. They cause shortness of breath, wheezing, coughing, breathing trouble and other symptoms. If an asthma attack is severe, a person may need emergency treatment to restore normal breathing.

Asthma causes approximately 5,000 deaths per year. Although most asthmatics who die of the disease are more than 50 years old, rates of asthma death have increased in almost all age groups.

Most asthma deaths occur in urban areas. In 1985, 21 percent of asthma deaths among 5-34 year olds occurred in New York City, New York, and Cook County, Illinois. South Bronx has the highest rates of asthma in the country.

In 1998, Chicago had the highest rate of blacks dying of asthma in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Moreover, the asthma death rate in Illinois for people between the ages of 5 and 34 increased 341 percent from 1979 to 1994, according to a 1997 CDC asthma mortality report.

Puerto Ricans in the United States suffer from asthma far more frequently than other ethnic groups. One in every five Puerto Rican children (20%) in the United States had asthma in 1982-1984 compared to 4.5% of Mexican-American, 8.8% of Cuban, 9.1% of black and 6.5% of white children.