COMMENT | Protect public health with lessons from Covid
We’ve had to walk around with face masks, use hand sanitisers, limit social interaction and basically over two years, change the way we lived.
Using this painful lesson as a yardstick, we need to deal pre-emptively with issues such as air and water pollution, both of which are acute and chronic problems that affect all levels of society.
In the context of the Feb 6 Unicef report which stated that nearly 40,000 children perish annually from air pollution-related causes in East Asia and the Pacific, immediate and long-term measures need to be formulated to address this before changes are forced upon us due to alarming circumstances.
Metropolitan cities such as Delhi in India are already facing this, where schools have to be closed, people can’t get to work, and there is an upsurge in hospitalisation due to respiratory-related illnesses.
Two key areas that need change would be...
