Janjivan Bureau / New Delhi : Scientist and health sector thinker strongly emphasized the need to accord pollution prevention a high priority and to integrate it into planning processes at national, state and municipal levels. They also underscored the need for a collaborative, multi-sectoral approach to address what is a wide-ranging issue both geographically and in terms of the source contributions. Speakers also noted that the vital need to raise awareness on environment-linked diseases, and drew attention to the important role physicians can play in that process.
A briefing on the findings of the Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health by the Centre for Environmental Health (Public Health Foundation of India) in partnership with The Lancet, Pure Earth and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (New York). The event brought together policymakers, public health experts, physicians, and civil society representatives. Subjects discussed at the event include methodological aspects of estimating the burden of disease due to various environmental pollutants, the findings of the commission published last month in The Lancet, and debated the implications on policy design and implementation.
Mr. Jairam Ramesh, Member of Parliament and former Minister of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, noted that the series of international studies published in the last few years, only serves to reinforce the high impact of environmental pollution on mortality and morbidity in India. He also expressed the need to look beyond Delhi and beyond just air pollution, to recognize the vast scale of environmental exposures and their linked health outcomes around the country, with particular emphasis on several critically polluted areas.
The briefing also had a presentation by Prof. Kirk R. Smith (University of California, Berkeley), on the methods and data that feed into the development of the burden estimates from pollutant exposures, and Prof. Mukesh Khare (IIT-Delhi) on the findings and recommendations of the report. Prof. Smith spoke to how Indians as a population are more vulnerable to environment-linked diseases due to existing challenges such as poor nutrition and low access to healthcare. Prof. Khare noted that pollution-linked diseases caused global welfare losses of $4.6 trillion or 6% of global GDP. Other dignitaries present at the event included Dr. Arvind Kumar (Ganga Ram Hospital & Lung Care Foundation), Dr. William Suk (National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, USA), and Dr. B. Sengupta (Former Member Secretary, CPCB).
