Deaths from respiratory illnesses on rise: Report

The bad quality of air, which leads to acute respiratory ailments, was the biggest cause of deaths due to diseases in 2011, a government study released on Tuesday said, Chetan Chauhan reports,

Updated on: Jan 3, 2013, 01:25:24 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The bad quality of air, which leads to acute respiratory ailments, was the biggest cause of deaths due to diseases in 2011, a government study released on Tuesday said.

The Statistical Handbook of India 2013 says 2,429 people died owing to respiratory diseases in 2011, much more than the deaths caused by water-borne diseases and Japanese encephalitis. However, deaths due to other diseases such as heart ailments and cancer have not been counted.

But, other international studies have also cited rising population as an increasing cause of deaths in India.

The global burden of disease (GBD) of the World Health Organisation (WHO) released in December says air pollution is the sixth most dangerous killer in south Asia. “Around 65% of the air pollution deaths occur in Asia and close to quarter of this happen in India,” the report says.

The government study had confirmed the findings, saying 2.63 crore people in India suffer from acute respiratory disease, the causes of which are indoor pollution and rising air pollution levels.

A study by Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) on the impact of indoor air pollution has estimated that 51,660-84,731 post-neonatal deaths occur in the country every year, which is 27.5% of the total such deaths.

The TERI said the deaths are avoidable, if the biomass fuels are replaced by safe fuels and amount of smoke generated is reduced.

The Central Pollution Control Board data for 2010 shows that air pollution has risen in all 257 cities and towns where air quality is monitored.

In Indian cities, except 10, the air quality was reported to be above the national ambient air quality standards.

Although the data is minimal indication, the report said maximum number of respiratory-related deaths took place in West Bengal followed by Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.

However, many states such as Bihar, Assam and Chandigarh did not record deaths under this category.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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