Congratulatory Remark

Obstructive Lung Disease (OLD) is one of the leading causes of death in the world. Its high prevalence and medical expenditure also impose socioeconomic burdens. In addition, OLD is one of the major diseases that have been increasing world-wide while other diseases such as cardiovascular and cancer have been decreasing or stable.

It is urgent to make every effort to investigate the causes of increasing OLD and to control the disease before it is too late. Smoking of cigarettes, one of the well-known causes, is still prevalent in most of the world and inhalation of biomass fuel has been increasingly recognized to be important as a major cause of OLD in many developing countries. Aging and other unknown causes should be perused to give more understandings of the disease. Such understanding will reveal the many possible ways to control the disease and will surely help to save many lives suffering from the ailment.

Your participation in the OLD Research Foundation will immensely contribute to invaluable output in this field. This foundation will facilitate to activate the research of OLD and will give future hope to as many as possible the OLD patients.

Introductory
Remarks

The prevalence of OLD such as asthma and COPD has been increasing worldwide recently and advances in technology and medical knowledge are absolutely necessary in this area.
In order to achieve such advances, our domestic medical community must engage in sustained efforts and provide constant attention to the situation.
The study of OLD has been proceeding actively domestically and abroad, and such efforts have led to tremendous results.

COPD was considered as an incurable disease before. Based upon the results of recent research, however, COPD has been redesignated as a treatable disease.
This change served as the impetus for the initiation of efforts to conquer COPD.
The Obstructive Lung Disease Research Foundation (OLDRF) was established as a part of the efforts to contribute to the public health and help COPD patients.
The OLD Research Foundation will try to provide a central location for the collaboration of COPD research. This foundation will also contribute to the improvement of the public health and maintain a high level COPD collaborative research network.
The foundation will obtain international recognition through its role as a hub for COPD research, spurring further research and creating jobs for researchers.

In order to achieve these goals, we will promote a variety of projects such as providing for the continuous exchange of research results, publication of journals and newsletters which meet the purpose of our academic lectures, and holding conferences, education programs and promotions.

We will also support various projects to encourage active international collaboration.