6 November 2026
The International Respiratory Coalition (IRC) and the WHO Regional Office for Europe will co-host a two-day multi-country workshop in Budapest on 24 to 25 November, bringing together national coalition delegations to strengthen leadership and build capacity on chronic respiratory diseases (CRDs).
The scale of this challenge is clear: in 2023, the WHO European region recorded 56.2 million cases of asthmaand 38.4 million cases of COPD, contributing to 349,200 early deaths and a societal cost of €311 billion.
This is the first joint initiative between IRC and WHO Europe, and the workshop builds on a growing collaboration between the IRC, the European Respiratory Society (ERS) and WHO Europe. IRC Chair Prof. Anita Simonds and ERS Advocacy Council Chair Prof. Zorana Andersen met with WHO Regional Director Hans Kluge in Copenhagen earlier this year, with noncommunicable disease (NCD) prevention and health promotion identified as a shared priority.
Country delegations comprising Ministry of Health representatives, healthcare professionals and lived experience advocates will use the WHO-ERS CRD policy and practice self-assessment tool to evaluate national policies, identify priority gaps and begin drafting national CRD roadmaps. The participating IRC national coalitions will be among the first to pilot this tool, developed by WHO with ERS and IRC support.
Each delegation is expected to leave Budapest with a draft national CRD situation analysis, a priority action list and an early outline of a national roadmap – the building blocks for the funded national respiratory health plans that are central to IRC’s mission of reducing respiratory disease mortality by a third globally by 2030.
→ Visit the event web page for more details
→ Access data on chronic respiratory disease burden across 21 countries