Was treibt die Lungenärzte an? FIRS statement in response to Frankfurter Allgemeine article on air pollution

    Read the latest response statement:

    In English (09/04/2019)
    In German (29/01/2019) 

    Was treibt die Lungenärzte an?* –Better respiratory health for all!

    In response to an article published in Frankfurter Allgemeine on January 24, 2019, the Forum of International Respiratory Societies (FIRS) respectively disagrees with the group of about 100 pulmonologists and agrees with the German national standards, the European standards, and the World Health Organization (WHO) standards.

    World Lung Day 2019 Partners

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    The Forum of International Respiratory Societies (FIRS) would like to thank all organisations who have pledged to support World Lung Day (WLD) 2019.

    WLD falls on 25th September and is a day to rally advocacy for respiratory health and air quality globally. You can see the full list of organisations supporting WLD 2019 below.

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    If you would like to support WLD please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

    View WLD partner logos below or view the World Lung Day partner list.

    The 2019 WLD toolkit is now available view here

    World AIDS Day, FIRS Highlights Link Between HIV and TB

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    Tuberculosis (TB) is the world’s leading infectious disease and it accounts for one in three deaths from HIV/AIDS, according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) 2018 report on TB. This is why on World AIDS Day the Forum of International Respiratory Societies (FIRS), calls on governments, health advocates and non-government organisations to strengthen their response to AIDS and TB.

    “AIDS and TB are a deadly combination,” said Polly Parsons, MD, President of American Thoracic Society, a FIRS founding member. “In the developing world, TB is often the first sign a person has HIV. Together, the diseases are far worse than they are alone.”

    World TB Day - 24 March 2019

    World TB Day, falls on 24 March each year, a day designed to build public awareness that tuberculosis (TB) today remains an epidemic in much of the world.

    TB is preventable and curable, yet it remains the world’s most common infectious disease killer. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 10 million people fell ill from TB in 2017 and 1.6 million people died.

    Only 64 percent of the estimated 10 million global cases of TB were actually diagnosed and notified. 

    The Forum of International Respiratory Societies (FIRS) warns of a link between ambient air pollution and the high incidence of hypersensitivity pneumonitis in urban cities

    An article published in the European Respiratory Journal found that a higher proportion of patients diagnosed with hypersensitivity pneumonitis (HP) lived in cities with higher levels of air pollutants. [1].

    “We discovered that the majority of patients with HP in India, were living in urban cities, prompting an investigation into the link between ambient air pollution in urban India and the high incidence of HP,” Ganesh Raghu, MD, senior research author and Professor of Medicine and Laboratory Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine. [2]