It is a condition that kills six people each year in the district and hospitalises more than 160.
Equally disturbing is the statistic that one in four Whanganui children suffer from asthma - a rate which exceeds the national average.
"In New Zealand we have created a triple jeopardy for poor health," says expert paediatrician Professor Innes Asher.
"Poverty, unhealthy housing and inadequate basic healthcare puts health at risk, but when the three are combined ... poor physical health is almost inevitable, as in Dickens' times."
The NZME report said the most common condition affecting children's health was bronchiolitis, a viral inflammatory chest infection.
The easily transmitted disease could be prevented by washing hands before handling children or by ensuring they remained in smoke-free environments.
Other causes of hospitalisation were asthma and pneumonia.
Respiratory diseases have long been associated with cold, damp housing, and research shows the risk of a cold and damp house can be reduced by keeping it warm and dry with a well-insulated fabric and good ventilation systems.
The illnesses peak in winter, and the numbers affected are getting worse.
Respiratory conditions like asthma and bronchiolitis are causing more hospitalisations each year, with the most severe leaving irreparable damage in babies' lungs as they get sick time and time again.
Doctors argue the hospitalisations are a result of embedded child poverty levels combined with a relentless housing crisis.
They are calling for an urgent change in housing, saying the combination of child poverty and "shocking" housing conditions have been normalised.
"We have waves of kids coming in the minute it gets cold," says respiratory pediatrician Dr Cass Byrnes from Auckland's Starship Hospital.
"The problem is, the kids just can't get symptom free - they go home with antibiotics to the same environment that cause the problem."
Dr Byrnes says the severity of cases is getting worse. Rates of bronchiectasis, an irreversible, life-threatening lung disease caused by repeated chest infections, have tripled in 15 years.
"It's a Third World disease, the kind of thing that if you were going to see it, the patients would be in their eighties. Now we are diagnosing it younger and younger," Dr Byrnes said.
"Internationally, people are astonished at the numbers we have here. It's completely terrifying."