KABUL (SW): Increasingly polluted air in the capital Kabul has led to an outbreak of respiratory chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and acute lower respiratory infections (LRI) particularly among children.
According to the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) officials, out of an average of a thousand patients visiting public hospitals on daily basis, up to 350 are suffering from COPD or LRI.
My eyes burn and throat hurts when walking to and from office on the roads in the rush hour. On one such day, I saw a woman named Tahera Mutaqi visiting a health center in the city. She told me her child got ill due to the polluted air. “Due to burning of all sorts of things (in domestic heaters amid winter) people are getting sick due to the polluted air. My daughter is almost two-year-old, and when I took her to the hospital there were so many patients suffering because of the same issue.
Fawad, another Kabul resident, said he is frustrated with the increasingly polluted air and water in Kabul as more and more people are getting ill because of the pollution. “Thousands of patients are visiting public and private hospitals. Some have cough problems others are with sore throat, and all of it is because of the pollution in the air in Kabul. It has become so polluted that all children and even older people are getting sick.”
For an expert opinion, I approached Dr. Ahmad Javed, a specialist on internal medicine. He informed the particles in Kabul’s polluted air not only result in COPD and LRI, but can also harm ear, nose and throat as well as eyes. He expressed that this can also lead to lung cancer. “Those people that are constantly exposed to the polluted air can fell prey to cancer”.
With a fast-increasing population, Kabul sees alarmingly high levels of smoke in the air caused by burning of coal and all sorts of other items in winter by the inhabitants.
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