Ireland has the highest death rate from lung disease in western Europe, a conference in Dublin heard yesterday.
Dr Charles Gallagher, a consultant respiratory physician at St Vincent's hospital, said 22 per cent of all deaths in the Republic each year were as a result of lung disease.
He said people were often unaware of the importance of seeking help for respiratory symptoms such as coughs until it was too late. "Somebody with a cough going on for more than a month has to be assessed for that. Using over the counter medications for cough is totally inappropriate if they have had the cough for more than two weeks. That should be totally disallowed.
"We've had people coming in to us who have been using cough bottles for two or three months," he added.
He was addressing an Irish Thoracic Society symposium on respiratory health at the Royal College of Physicians. Dr Gallagher also told the attendance that lung cancer is now increasing in non-smokers, especially women. "It will soon kill more women than breast cancer," he said.
"We've always known that lung cancer occurs in non-smokers. But the figures are now that roughly one in six people with lung cancer have never ever smoked in their lives."
He said factors which could explain some cases were a family history of lung cancer and environmental factors such as passive smoking.
The number of respiratory specialists per head of population in the Republic was among the lowest in Europe. He said there should be one respiratory specialist for every 50,000 people. "We don't have anything like that in Ireland," he said.
Prof Brendan Drumm, chief executive of the Health Service Executive, said over 90 per cent of the health budget went on front line services but it had not delivered "anything like what it should have delivered" for this money.