Montevideo Centre

Personnel

• Dra Sylvia Brea
• Dra Dolores Holgado
• Dra. María Julia Saráchaga
• Dra Ester Spalter

ISAAC in Montevideo

All of us know that since the 80’s there was an increasing asthma prevalence in many countries worldwide and also in our country, even considering that the several studies done between 1970 and 1990 had a different methodology and differences in the age of the samples. That was an important reason to join ISAAC. We were connected to ISAAC Steering Committee thanks to Dr. Fernando Martinez.

Phase One

Montevideo was the only centre in Uruguay. It is a very small country with only 3. 000.000 inhabitants of which half of them lives in Montevideo, the capital city. It was impossible to get a sample of 3000 children in some other city. In Montevideo we could accomplished the two groups questionnaires and we also used the videoquestionnaire. It was difficult to succeed in getting the parental questionnaire fulfilled in the 6-7 years group, but we did it.

Phase three

At the beginning we had planned to participate with the two groups as in Phase One. We began with the 6-7 years group, but the difficulty to obtain the parental questionnaire completed in time, was the reason to abandon this group. We continued with the 13-14 years group including the videoquestionnaire.

Phase Three was carried out with a huge effort of all the colaborators. In 2002 Uruguay suffered an important financial crisis, so we did not had the same financial support than during Phase One. However after so many problems we were proud to have accomplished our task.

In spite the difficulties we had a second centre, with the generous participation of Dra Cristina Lapides as Principal Investigator in the city of Paysandú.

We gratefully acknowledge financial support from Glaxo Wellcome. We are also indebted to all children, parents and school staff who participated in the study and wish to thank our fieldwork team for their effort and enthusiasm throughout each study.