Woman’s 30-year cough ’caused broken ribs, pain and heartache’

Prof Jacky Smith said there needed to be greater awareness of the condition, as it affected “one in 10 people, so it’s really common”.

“In a lot of people, treating [the causes] will make the cough go away, but it’s really a problem when those treatments don’t work and it becomes a chronic cough,” she said.

“In that situation, it can be there for years and it really ruins people’s lives.”

She said it “really impacts people’s quality of life”.

“It really ruins things like going to weddings, funerals, going to the cinema – anywhere where people have got to be quiet.”

She said women were more likely to be affected than men and “commonly starts in people between 50 and 70 years of age” and there was “a lot more work” to be done to find out the reasons why it happened, but there were treatments were “on the horizon”.

Until those were available though, she said she wanted the general public to be more tolerant.

“People need to understand that chronic coughing isn’t necessarily Covid or something that’s catching, and try to be a bit kinder,” she said.