‘Growing pollution in Pak’s Punjab province sickened 1.8m people in one month’

Lahore: Worsening air pollution sickened an estimated 1.8 million people in Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province in the past month, health officials said Tuesday, as schools across the province were ordered to close for five days to protect children’s health.

Punjab with a population of 127 million has been struggling to combat smog since last month.

“Over 1.8 million people visited hospitals and private clinics in the smog-hit districts in Punjab in the past 30 days, and most of them had been suffering from respiratory-related diseases and burning of eyes,” said Ahsan Riaz, a spokesman for the health department.

Earlier, officials said that tens of thousands of people were treated at hospitals in recent weeks, but Riaz said Tuesday that the number of people affected by smog is much higher, and hospitals are flooded with such patients.

The closure of schools in the entire province came more than a week after officials shut schools in 18 smog-hit districts there.

Toxic smog has shrouded Pakistan’s cultural capital of Lahore and 17 other districts in Punjab since

October.