A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away

may be the start of Star Wars, but there are no countries far, far away in the present day, as shown by the first concern of the NHS 111 help-line being whether you have got Ebola virus. We need to know about respiratory disease overseas, not just because it may turn up in an Accident and Emergency Department somewhere near you, but because it may shed new light on our home-grown issues. Our cover features the map of South America not because your editors are looking for a retirement haven with no UK extradition treaty, but because we have a review of the different asthmas and their prevalences across Latin America, highlighting the extraordinary diversity of syndromes and associations in that continent (see page 898). There is so much to learn from geographical pathology so long as we do not assume all asthma is asthma, rather than a spectrum of diverse airway diseases. From Africa, Pitcher et al highlight the very high prevalence of radiological abnormalities in very young HIV positive African children at initiation of treatment, especially LIP …