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• GASPING FOR BREATH: After battling lung disease for six years, Corrie's Liz Dawn terrible legacy of her life-long smoking habit  

When Vera Duckworth, one of Coronation Street's most loved characters, passed away 18 months ago, there was barely a dry eye among the soap's 12.5million viewers.

But for actress Liz Dawn, who played Vera for an astonishing 34 years, it was a significant personal moment - not only because it was the end of the role, but also because she'd been building up to it since being diagnosed six years earlier with the lung disease, emphysema.

The condition leaves sufferers struggling for breath.

'My last years in the Street were increasingly stressful,' Liz says, talking about living with emphysema for the first time. . . .

Concern that others avoid the same problem is why she has agreed to be the celebrity ambassador for the British Lung Foundation (BLF) and is heading the organisation's Love Your Lungs campaign, launched this week.

Its aim is to encourage people with symptoms such as a persistent cough, breathlessness or wheezy chest to ask their doctor for a lung test. . . .

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