INHALER IS YOUR BFF, DON’T LEAVE IT AT HOME

NVI Jose was 19, midway through her first year of engineering at a college in Kottayam, when a particularly humid monsoon morning triggered the worst asthma attack she had experienced in years.

- UNNIKRISHNAN S @T'Puram

Her rescue inhaler was in her hostel room. By the time her roommate fetched it, she was already in the poly clinic near the college, struggling to speak. What made the episode worse, her doctors later told her family, was not just that the inhaler was absent , it was that Anvi had been using it incorrectly all this while.

Her story is a common one, reflecting a broader public health challenge where misinformation often keeps the most effective treatment at arm’s length. Across India, millions of asthma patients carry inhalers they barely understand, use incorrectly, or avoid altogether out of embarrassment. The consequences range from poorly controlled symptoms to hospitalisation and, in the worst cases, death.

Inhalers remain the most effective and safest tool available for managing asthma. Unlike tablets, which are absorbed into the bloodstream and affect the entire body, inhaled medication travels directly to the airways.