The latest report by the World Health Organization(WHO) has come up with some heartbreaking revelations. According to the report, titled, ‘Air Pollution and Child Health: Prescribing Clean Air,’ 93%(1.3 billion) of the children under the age of 15 years breath polluted air which puts their health and development at an extreme risk. Around 6,00,000 children died in the year 2016 itself due to acute lower respiratory infections caused by pollution. The biggest threat is posed to the low and middle countries.
The report says that 98% children under the age of five in these countries are exposed to PM2.5.
India(~1 Lac), Nigeria (~98K) and Pakistan (~38K) account for the most number of deaths. The report comes a day earlier to the UN body’s first Global Conference on the very topic of Air Pollution and Health.
Pollution has been a constant threat for India for a long time now. In another release by the World Health Organization earlier this year, it was found that out of the top 10 polluted cities, 9 belonged to India. Kanpur, Faridabad and Varanasi turned out to be the most polluted in the world, while Delhi ranked 6th. The sole city outside India in the list is Bamenda from Cameroon, it is placed at number 8.
There is a number of steps that have been suggested by the WHO to the various states. Switching to clean cooking fuels, low emission power generation, cutting the number of waste burning cases, are a few to name.
The Indian government in the past have come with their own set of strict guidelines. Last year only, the National Capital Region was put under a “Graded Action Plan” by the Ministry of Environment Forest and Climate change.
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