La enfermedad respiratoria crónica: Reflexiones en el contexto del sistema de salud colombiano

Chronic Respiratory Disease (CRD) is a public health problem in Colombia. Its severity increases by the presence of risk factors like fire smoke, which tend to prevail in young population and that leads consequences at physical, social and mental level in the long run. The CRD includes a series of clinical entities with their own characteristics, caused by the suffering, social isolation, physiological deterioration and the associated morbidity. All these contribute to the functional limitation, the lost quality of life and, ultimately, can turn the individual that suffers it in a dependent being without future. All this takes to a greater consumption of health resources without this means one better attention, since in many opportunities the isolated efforts, the lack of clear rules, sustained proposals and the non use of clinical guidelines among other causes, allow that the intervention would be destined to only palliate the present symptoms, but is far from including an integral, effective handling and that responds to individual necessities. This article analyze the public norms and policies that cover patients with CRD, the aspects related to the rights to an integral, safe and real treatment in the affected individual along with the obstacles for its accomplishment.