Respiratory disease includes asthma, lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), obstructive sleep apnoea, bronchiectasis, childhood bronchiolitis and childhood pneumonia.
Quick facts
- Respiratory disease is New Zealand’s third most common cause of death.
- Respiratory disease costs New Zealand more than $5.5 billion every year.
- One in six (over 700,000) New Zealanders live with a respiratory condition, and these rates are worsening.
- Respiratory disease accounts for one in eight of all hospital stays.
- More than half of the people admitted to hospital with a poverty-related condition are there because of a respiratory problem such as asthma, bronchiolitis, acute infection or pneumonia.
- People living in the most deprived households are admitted to hospital for respiratory illness over three times more often than people from the wealthiest areas.
- Across all age groups, hospitalisation rates are much higher for Pacific peoples (2.6 times higher) and Maori (2.1 times higher) than for other ethnic groups (Telfar Barnard et al., 2015).
Learn more
About respiratory disease The Asthma and Respiratory Foundation NZ
Te Hā Ora (Breath of Life), the National Respiratory Strategy The asthma foundation