Professor John Robertson OBA
BBC Scotland and STV have been platforming a survey of only 515 sufferers of Asthma in Scotland, to claim:
Its 2025 survey Life With A Lung Condition, which questioned 515 asthma sufferers in Scotland, found only 30% of respondents were receiving basic asthma care, which the charity defined as having an annual asthma review, an inhaler technique check, and a written asthma plan. That is below the figure for the UK, where 32% of asthma sufferers receive this level of care.
https://news.stv.tv/scotland/campaigners-call-for-fully-funded-lung-health-strategy-for-scotland
As always, we are not told that this is, at most around 0.002% of Scotland’s 720 000 asthma sufferers:
https://www.asthmaandlung.org.uk/scotland
This paints a very different picture of asthma treatment in Scotland which I was able to paint, with real evidence, only last November:
On November 11th 2024, BBC Breakfast had:
Failure to diagnose and treat lung disease including asthma is ‘silently suffocating’ the NHS.
Last year, I was able to write:
Why have deaths due to asthma fallen in Scotland while increasing in England & Wales?
BBC Scotland is headlining a story on asthma-related admissions in different parts of the UK with, of course, a tragic case upfront, and parts of Scotland picked out as among the worst but, surely, the survival rate is the news here.
In Scotland, from 2008 to 2021, deaths due to asthma have fallen from 103 to 96, a 6.7% fall. https://www.scotpho.org.uk/health-wellbeing-and-disease/asthma/data/mortality-data
Deaths from asthma in England and Wales have increased by a third in the past decade, a new analysis has shown.
The analysis of official figures from the Office for National Statistics, released by the charity Asthma UK on 9 August, shows that more than 1400 adults and children died from asthma attacks in 2018, an 8% increase since 2017.
Overall, more than 12 700 people have died from asthma in England and Wales in the past decade. Deaths increased by 33% during 2008-18. https://www.bmj.com/content/366/bmj.l5108#:~:text=Overall%2C%20more%20than%2012%20700,a%20GP%20or%20asthma%20nurse
And the rate of deaths?
‘More than 1400’ in England & Wales in 2018.
114 in Scotland in the same year.
England & Wales, with 11 times the population might be expected to have 1254 but has more than 1400, 12% higher.
Why?
Free prescriptions?
A better NHS?
Less air pollution? See, for example:
In December 2022, we saw evidence of an even more dramatic effect of free prescriptions:
Evidence that free asthma prescriptions in Scotland may have saved thousands from a Covid death
On 21 December 2022, there were only 8 patients in ICU in Scotland but 174 in England, nearly twice as many per head of population. Even in Wales with a smaller population, there were more, 10.
Throughout November and December as Covid hospitalisations began to climb again, there have been 2 to 3 times as many, pro rata, in English Hospitals than in Scotland.
I wondered why this might be and Lorna Murray [https://twitter.com/LornaRetiree] tweeted:
People in England are unable to pay for drugs such as ventolin for asthma therefore are hospitalised as a result
I was intrigued and did a quick search for evidence either way. No research group seems to have done this and I offer my hypothesis below ready to be contradicted with better evidence but:
People with moderate-to-severe or uncontrolled asthma are more likely to be hospitalized from COVID-19.https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/asthma.html
People with mild and/or well-controlled asthma are neither at significantly increased risk of hospitalisation with nor more likely to die from COVID-19 than adults without asthma.https://thorax.bmj.com/content/early/2022/03/29/thoraxjnl-2021-218629
I think its reasonable to interpret ‘well-controlled‘ as involving medication.
Can everyone afford to be medicated adequately?
Essential medicines for treating asthma and COPD were largely unavailable and unaffordable in LMICs [low-income and middle-income countries]. This was particularly true for inhalers containing corticosteroids.https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(22)00330-8/fulltext
The Covid death rate in Scotland is 226.8 per 100 000. In England, it is 310.9, 37% higher in a country with a generally higher life expectancy.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
I am an asthmatic who has well managed asthma as a result of annual, often more frequent, asthma revues, overvthevyears I have been prescribed inhalers, for use once a day and as required, and also been referred to consultants for more extensive tests and scans but have never had, or needed, a written asthma plan.
Perhaps it is the three parts of the question that is producing the anomaly over asthma treatment in Scotland.
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515 people surveyed? They could very easily have contacted many more than that if they had asked advice from GP Practice Nurses.
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