ALLERGIC
DISEASES
IN R. MACEDONIA
PREFACE
The interest of the author
of these lines and his collaborators for the frequency of the
allergic disorders in our country is dating back twenty years ago. The
causes were
professional, pragmatic and also due to the fact that we didn’t want to
accept the usually delivered sentence “Unfortunately there is no relevant
data for Macedonia concerning the prevalence of ….”. Such explanation
for certain entities was most frequently illustrated with exact figures
for the elaborated occurrence in some countries as for example in the
U.S.A., Australia, European countries as well as countries of our neighborhood.
In 1993 analyzing the group of almost 700 randomly selected patients we
received the first piece of information for allergic rhinitis. In 1994
our research was enriched with many distinctions of this occurrence, but
in both cases the data were only for the city of Skopje.
The team at the Institute for Occupational Health in collaboration with
the Occupational Health Services, during 1995 and 1996 accomplished a
polycentric study for the extension of bronchial asthma in 11 towns of
the Republic of acedonia. These reasons and taking into consideration
the previous experiences and already established collaboration with the
medical doctors from other towns in Macedonia, urged us to realize the
Project No.400998 approved by the Ministry for Education and Science.
The research duration was 5 years (from 1998 to 2003) and was conducted
in six towns. The Project’s results are elaborated in this publication.
Since the editors were not announcing their strong intention to distribute
this particular publication to all Collaborating Centers of Occupational
Health with WHO and National Association for allergy and clinic immunology,
the attitude pointed out by the author of this lines would be completely
diminished as of 1998 he critically reviewed and emphasized the discontent
of the nomenclature of allergic entities with the one of the ICD-10 of
WHO of 1992. This condition became more complex when the European Academy
for Allergology and Clinic Immunology in 2001 proclaimed a new revised
nomenclature and classification of allergic disorders. In relation to
this update, Mr. Van Cauwenberge as a title of one of his disputes set
the question: “New nomenclature, is it a fashion or a need?” Our answer
would be: “It is certainly not a fashion, but at this moment it is not
a need, too”.
We have been trying to present the results of this research various aspects,
emphasizing the public health features. Have we succeeded?
Editor and
Principal Investigator of the Project
Prof. Vladimir Cvetanov, M.D., Ph.D.