"Unhealthy Air In Rural Alaska Homes Targeted In Tribal Program"

"They were called 'frequent flyers,' children flown from their village homes to the hospital in Anchorage for treatment for coughs, wheezes and trouble breathing, then sent back home — only to return again with the same symptoms.

A.J. Salkoski, a senior program manager at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium in Anchorage, described the phrase and the observations behind it.

But those symptoms were nothing new to Rosalyn Singleton, a pediatrician who, for almost 30 years, has worked on respiratory diseases from her office at the health consortium. For years she studied bronchiectasis in Alaska Native youths, a chronic lung disease so rare in the developed world that it has earned the 'orphan disease' tag. But it is prevalent enough in Alaska that Singleton wanted to find a way to prevent it or cure it."

Kelsey Lindsey reports for Alaska Dispatch News August 6, 2017.