As per the Global Burden of Disease 2019 report for the world population and India, it has been documented that of the 55.9 million deaths that are occurring globally, 16.3% of the deaths occur in India alone. The major contributors to these deaths are the non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular and chronic respiratory diseases which together account for 63% of all the deaths reported in India. These growing numbers of non-communicable diseases have overtaken the morbidity and mortality burden due to communicable diseases. Of all the communicable diseases, chronic respiratory diseases such as COPD, Asthma and chronic bronchitis contribute to the increasing burden of respiratory diseases.

A point prevalence nation-wide study called the POSEIDON study showed us that respiratory symptoms (50.6%) were the leading cause of a visit to a healthcare practitioner followed by digestive (25%), circulatory (12.5%), skin (9%) and endocrine (6.6%). In addition, a recent publication on bronchiectasis, in the Lancet Global health, 2019, reported that, a more severe disease and distinct characteristics have been reported in Indian patients with bronchiectasis as compared to patients in other countries.