Increase in respiratory illness cases with rise in air pollution: Mandaviya

NEW DELHI: Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said on Tuesday that preliminary observations from the surveillance data of various hospitals suggest that there is an increase in respiratory illness cases during periods when air quality worsens.

The National Programme on Climate Change and Human Health of the National Centre for Disease Control has initiated surveillance on acute respiratory illnesses through sentinel surveillance sites, established in nearly 80 hospitals across 18 states.

This surveillance is meant to observe the trends of acute respiratory illnesses reported from sentinel hospitals of cities in relation to the respective air quality levels, Mandaviya said in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.

“Preliminary observations from such data suggest that there is an increase in respiratory illness cases during periods when air quality worsens,” he said.

The ARI digital surveillance data was started in August 2023 through Integrated Health Information portal, Mandaviya said.

That Air pollution is one of the major contributing factors for respiratory ailments and associated diseases is common knowledge.

There is no doubt that the health of the human body, including the respiratory system are additionally impacted by a number of other factors which include food, occupation, medical comorbidity, immunity and heredity, etc., of the individuals also.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) in collaboration with Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) and Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) had conducted a study titled “The impact of air pollution on deaths, disease burden and life expectancy across India” in 2018.

The ICMR has also conducted a multi-site study to document the acute effect of increase in air pollution on respiratory morbidity.

The study was conducted on patients attending emergency rooms of five sites namely AIIMS (paediatric, adults), Kalawati Saran Children’s Hospital, VP Chest Institute, National institute of Tuberculosis and

Respiratory Diseases.