Health Ministry: Air Pollution Highest Contributor to Pulmonary Diseases

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin last week asserted that the government continues to actively prevent the effects of air pollution, which contributes to 15-30 percent of the risk of pulmonary diseases. Other contributors are smoking prevalence, recurrent infections, and genetics.

"Efforts are made through cross-sector involvement. Because this is an environmental problem and we are in it and this must be overcome together,” the Health Ministry’s statement reads last week. “We hope that our future generations of children can still breathe fresh and healthy air and children can grow and develop optimally."

The chairperson of the Association of Indonesian Pulmonologists and Professors of Pulmonology and Respiration at the University of Indonesia’s Medical Faculty, Professor Agus Dwi Susanto, emphasized the importance of prevention in efforts to overcome air pollution problems.

"Air pollution is proven to cause respiratory problems. Prevention efforts by reducing air pollution must be carried out by all parties so that cases of respiration can be reduced," said Agus.

Facing this situation, Air Talk Co-Founder Novita Natalia asserted that the problem cannot be handled by individual parties, but requires the cooperation of all elements within the community.

"We see this condition as a call for all parties to continue to raise awareness about the importance of clean air,” Natalia insisted.

Data from the Global Burden Diseases 2019 Diseases and Injuries Collaborators suggests five respiratory diseases are contributing to the most deaths in the world, namely chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), pneumonia, lung cancer, tuberculosis, and asthma.

Out of the 10 diseases with the most cases in Indonesia, four of them are respiratory diseases, including COPD with 145 events with 783,000 deaths, lung cancer with 18 events with 286,000 deaths, pneumonia with 5,900 events with 525,000 deaths, and asthma with 504 events and 276,000 deaths.

ERWIN PRIMA 

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