About two years ago, Taniya McDonald made on average about 10 trips to the emergency room within a one-month period because of her asthmatic daughter. She was there so often she felt like a member of the hospital’s family, she said.
About two years ago, Taniya McDonald made on average about 10 trips to the emergency room within a one-month period because of her asthmatic daughter. She was there so often she felt like a member of the hospital’s family, she said.
McDonald’s four-year-old daughter, Zehkia, developed frequent colds as a baby and was later diagnosed with asthma when she was nine months old. Her other children, a six-year-old girl and one-year-old boy are also asthmatic.
“(Zehkia) would get shortness of breath all the time and have a chronic cough. I was in the emergency room so much,” the 28-year-old West Side mother told the Defender. In the United States, about 12 percent of children under age 18 are diagnosed with asthma. On the West Side in the North Lawndale community, about one out of every four have the diagnosis, according to the Sinai Urban Health Institute.
One of the institute’s programs — Healthy Home, Healthy Child — sends trained health educators to homes on the West Side with asthmatic children to assess issues that could trigger an attack and help minimize them.
While researchers haven’t been able to pinpoint why asthma rates have risen in urban areas, there is speculation that exposure to environmental allergens and genetic predisposition plays a factor, said Helen Margellos-Anast, director of HHHC.
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