I will just fill in a little bit here.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. The impact of COPD is overwhelming in every aspect in our society. This is why there's the need for a global approach. Prevention, diagnosis, and management are the major components of this approach.
Because COPD is insidious and progressive, the symptoms are ignored and sometimes misinterpreted, bringing the patient to a state of isolation, low self-esteem, financial limitations, malnutrition, depression, and death.
In the year 2000, when the Lung Association's BreathWorks program started here in Ottawa, I had the honour to be then working with patients with COPD. I am a witness to the isolation, low self-esteem, financial limitations, malnutrition, and depression of patients who don't have a family, but find comfort and support in the rehabilitation programs.
After the rehabilitation programs, the patients in the maintenance exercise program regain the desire to live. One of my patients even went to buy a table and a chair to have his meals. Before he was only eating cereal and staying on the sofa watching TV. He was so short of breath that he was not even able to make his own meals. Today, he's on oxygen. He participates three times a week in the maintenance exercise program, working very hard, and he is working to be in shape to have a lung transplant.
Pulmonary rehabilitation and maintenance are the most cost-effective and needed interventions for the management of COPD. The Lung Association has now a very special program that can be replicated in various communities to offer the COPD patients the opportunity to learn and to self-manage this chronic disease.
Thank you very much.