Breathless Delhiites crowd AIIMS

JN Gupta, 65, stands inconspicuously in a queue outside the Out Patient Department of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). Breathless, he struggles with a 5 kg bag full of entangled translucent nasal tubes. The
former Deputy Comptroller Auditor General of India retired five years ago. Today, his collapsed lungs demand most of his attention and time.

"This bag contains my portable oxygen support. Seventy per cent of my lungs have collapsed. The right lung hardly works. I need oxygen support for 18-20 hours a day," Gupta says. In 2011, he was detected with Pulmonary Fibrosis, known to be caused by exposure to toxins, pollutants, or infections. The disease scars the lung tissue, leading to reduced blood supply and difficulty in breathing. Just last week, Gupta fell very sick and had to be rushed to AIIMS.

The horrendous reality of the worsening air quality in Delhi stares one right in the face at India's largest hospital. It is second week of October and the average temperature hovers around 34-37 degree Celsius.

Meanwhile, a 17-year-old student, a 32-year-old marketing executive, a 59-year-old homemaker, a 65-year-old retired government official, and a 76-year-old businessman are among nearly 400 patients who have lined up in serpentine queues outside AIIMS Director Dr Randeep Guleria's Out Patient Department clinic.

According to the Central Pollution Control Board's (CPCB) Continuous Ambient Air Quality data, the air quality generally worsens due to a dip in the temperature and an increase in the concentration of pollutants in atmosphere.

Over the last one week, however, temperature has not dipped but the pollution has spiked considerably. "Stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana is one of the major contributing factors. The OPD has seen a rise of patients by 10-15 per cent," Dr Guleria told DNA.

Meanwhile, 17-year-old Shivani had to skip school to see the doctor. "I have been having frequent bouts of breathlessness since Tuesday morning. It seems to be an infection in the lungs, and over the week, it has just worsened," she says. Last year around Diwali, 59-year-old Karol Bagh resident Kanak Devi (name changed) suffered an asthma attack.

"I was wheeled into AIIMS, and was started on intravenous steroids. I was gasping for air, and my eyes constantly watered. I piled on so much weight due to drugs. My lungs are weak, and have suffered 40 per cent damage," she says. On being queried whether she would like live outside Delhi, she shrugs. "Where is the choice? Delhi is my home, and it makes me suffer," she says.

According to the national safe standards, particulate matter of 2.5 micron size should not be more than 60 micrograms/cubic metre in the air. The World Health Organisation's (WHO) PM 2.5 safe standards are even lesser, at 25 µg/m³. In the last 24 hours, however, it was dangerously tipping the scales at 122.73 µg/m³ at south Delhi's Siri Fort area.

"People will live six years longer in Delhi, if the country met its national standards, and nine years longer, if it met the WHO standards," says Michael Greenstone, Director, Energy Policy Research Institute at University of Chicago. Greenstone had undertaken a study to understand the impact of pollution on life expectancy across the world, which included 50 most polluted districts in India.

"Farmers burn tonnes of waste. Farmers should be educated about the consequences of burning stubble. The waste should be disposed off in an eco-friendly manner," says Dr TK Joshi of the Centre for Occupational Health and Enviromental Medicine at the Maulana Azad Medical College in Delhi.

Doctors at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh, which caters to patients in Punjab and Haryana, highlight that farmers, in fact, are the most affected by air pollution caused due to stubble burning.

"There has been a spike in the number of asthma cases in the last few years, including those from rural areas. Farmers may say it is not affecting them, but it is detrimental to their health in the long run, especially to their lungs," Dr D Behera, Department of Pulmonary Medicine, PGIMER, says.

­—With inputs from Srishti Chaudhary in Chandigarh