WELLINGTON -- New international trade pacts, such as the under-negotiation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), are putting access to quality medicines at risk for millions of asthma sufferers around the world, chair of the Global Asthma Network Steering Group said Monday.

Professor Innes Asher, of the University of Auckland, urged health leaders around the world to put quality-assured essential asthma medicines on the World Health Organization pre- qualification list of priority medicines by next year.

She also said health authorities should have the medicines on all national essential medicines lists by 2015, and within five years have them available and affordable in all countries.

"Asthma causes disabling symptoms in millions of people who struggle to breathe, making ordinary activities extraordinarily difficulty things like going to school, working at a job, looking after children or aging parents, running or even walking," Asher said in a statement.

"About 235 million people in the world suffer from asthma and the number is increasing asthma is a neglected epidemic."

The respiratory illness cost billions of dollars annually in acute treatment, lost productivity, and lost education of children who are too unwell to attend school, but even in countries where the medicines were available their cost could be beyond the reach of many asthma sufferers.

"New international agreements being developed behind closed doors such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement potentially put at risk the ability of governments to negotiate lower prices for qualityassured medicines."

The Global Asthma Network, established in 2012, was working worldwide to improve management, research, surveillance, capacity building and to achieve global access to quality-assured essential medications.

The TPP negotiations between Brunei, Chile, Singapore, New Zealand, the United States, Australia, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia, Canada, Mexico, Japanand Thailand have been widely criticized for being conducted in secret.