Bermuda's fight against respiratory disease has been used as a model for the rest of the world to aspire to, and Bermudians should be proud.

This is the message brought by Sue Cross, a leading teacher of asthma care and prevention.

In her first visit to Bermuda, Ms Cross who is director of training at the National Asthma and Respiratory Centre in the UK has been training local nurses to become asthma educators.

The National Asthma and Respiratory Centre are the forerunners in asthma education and they hold courses around the world.

The course is intended to empower locally based trainers so that those wishing to complete a course in asthma care no longer need to go abroad, or have foreign trainers come to the island.

Ms Cross recently made a presentation to a conference in San Diego attended by over 4,000 health care professionals, and in her address, she used Bermuda as a model for what can be done when a community comes together to tackle a serious health problem.

While in Bermuda, Ms Cross is working in conjunction with local charity, Open Airways, started by nurse Liz Boden who obtained a diploma in asthma care from the National Training Centre in Britain in 1991.

Ms Cross spoke with The Royal Gazette and said: "The training is going very well and the nurses are very enthusiastic about taking their education forward.'' The two day course held at the Bermuda College ended recently and some of the students work in private clinics, and others in the hospital.

Ms Cross said that because of the education in Bermuda, morbidity and mortality rates have been improved dramatically.

And at conferences she has attended she told the US that they could transpose Bermuda's ideas onto the US health care system in their struggle against respiratory diseases.

Ms Cross's career as an asthma trainer started when she was a nurse and became disillusioned with the level of care offered, and so she decided to set up a course to teach asthma care in the UK.

She met with opposition from the medical establishment, but 12 years later, there are 230 centres in the UK, and the courses are recognised in countries such as Canada and the US.

Liz Boden hopes the latest course will mean the Island will have a qualified trainer on hand to teach asthma care givers.

Open Airways is the only registered local charity in Bermuda for Asthma and other chronic obstructive airway diseases, with qualified asthma educators.

Approximately one in ten adults and one in four children on the Island suffer from the disease.

Lack of knowledge about preventing and controlling asthma results in unnecessary lost working days and distressing, costly visits to the hospital and emergency departments.

Many asthmatics are unable to afford medications and basic equipment necessary to prevent asthmatic episodes, and some of the Island's children are sleeping on the floor.

So far, over 100 doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and pharmacists from the hospital, health department, schools, the prisons, pharmacies and doctors' offices have completed the Diploma in Asthma Care from the national Asthma and Respiratory Training Centre in England.

Workshops have also been held for a total of 80 nurses and other health care providers, and teachers, PTAs, churches, offices and clubs have had asthma education through lively presentations.

An immeasurably successful project was the "Pillows for Prevention,'' a project for school children where they learned how to prevent and control asthma at assembly, and each asthmatic child was given a new pillow with a dust mite cover.