Marquis MacFarland, 20 months, has been checked out of Oakland Children's Hospital in Oakland, Calif., probably his sixth emergency visit since he was born, but his mother long ago stopped counting.

"It's so often, I just be forgetting," said his mother, Catherine Shelton. She says Marquis always has a cold because their three-story East Oakland house is always freezing. And when Marquis gets a cold, he gets asthma.

Asthma is attacking the inner city, and many urban residents have little idea what has hit them. The National Center for Health Statistics says the rate of deaths from asthma climbed 67 percent to 5,106 in 1991 from 3,054 in 1981, with non-white communities hit hardest. Nationally, the center estimates, 12 million are diagnosed.