What is COPD?
This is not merely a "smoker’s cough" but a serious and progressive life-threatening disease, which causes ongoing breathing difficulties – and according to the World Health Organization (WHO), in 2015 it killed more than three million people worldwide.
A large international study in the Journal of Thoracic Disease established that the highest prevalence of stage 2 (or higher) COPD was among people in Cape Town, and surmised that both smoking and occupational dust were responsible.