South Asia, the home of the largest Hindu population, the famous Mount Everest, the country with the biggest population of the world, famous holiday islands, but also the home of conflicts and poverty. All of this makes the term South Asia a geographic location. Putting all these countries under the same label, because of culture, seems unfair.
In total, South Asia covers around 3% of the world’s land area . The region can be separated into 8 countries: Afghanistan, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan and India. In all these countries together, so in South Asia, live around 1.9 Billion people. This is around 25% of the total world population. Most of the people live in India, namely 1.38 Billion.
South Asia is facing a double burden of disease. Half of the deaths are attributable to non-communicable diseases, but also communicable disease still causes a lot of deaths. The most common infectious disease is tuberculosis, which causes 40% of the global burden (2015) . Respiratory infections and tuberculosis are still in the 4th place causing the most deaths in South Asia. Tuberculosis is strongly associated with the presence of chronic respiratory disease in adulthood, a non-communicable disease. Chronic respiratory diseases are on the 2nd place of causing the most deaths in South Asia. Both respiratory diseases are causing a lot of deaths in South Asia and thereby a global burden. The five largest contributors to this global burden of respiratory diseases are asthma, COPD, acute respiratory infections, tuberculosis, and lung cancer.
One country in particular is facing a double burden of disease that has a big impact on the population, India. In India respiratory infections and tuberculosis, a communicable disease, is on the 3rd place of causing the highest DALYs and on the 4th place of causing the most deaths. Meanwhile, chronic respiratory diseases, a non-communicable disease, is on the 4th place of causing a lot of DALYs. And on the 2nd place of causing the most deaths. One of the reasons for this is air pollution. Air pollution is a big problem in India. India is on the 21st place of cities with the worst air pollution. Air pollution has a negative effect on health. Long term exposure to air pollution, indoor and outdoor, contributed for over 1.67 million annual deaths from stroke, heart attack, diabetes, lung cancer, chronic lung diseases, and neonatal diseases, in this country (2019).
In this blog we want to provide information about the causes and consequences of air pollution and respiratory diseases in India with the aim to make this problem more well-known and to find an effective intervention in the future.
