Delhi Pollution: City Running Out Of Breath

One of the top stories in India is the rising pollution levels in the national capital. As the city of Delhi gets engulfed in smog every day, its citizens are gasping for precious air and filling up the vacancies in hospital beds. Ever since the burning of stubble started in the neighboring states, the number of patients in Delhi have tripled. A doctor in Delhi said that he is diagnosing around 250 to 300 patients everyday, which is almost three times the usual number. He said that most of the patients report inflammation in the respiratory tract, paving way for chronic bronchitis, lung cancer, and heart diseases.

The patients who are gasping for breath in New Delhi are getting themselves to the nearest available hospital bed in order to get treated with steam inhalation or nebulizer, both methods directly infusing the drugs into the airways of the body. Manoj Khati, a shopkeeper, initially ignored his cough but had to rush to a doctor when the intensity of his cough grew. He is now diagnosed with chronic bronchitis. He told the media that he was coughing for three days straight and felt like he was going to die. He is currently undergoing several tests.

Arvind Kumar, a respiratory disease specialist at the private Sri Ganga Ram Hospital in Delhi, inspite of the current, horrifying scenario, said that the condition of the patients would only get worse as pollution kills slowly and worse effects would wiggle their way out in the coming years. He said that if the condition of the city continued for ten more days, the life expectancy of the people living in Delhi would be shortened from several days to weeks. It is currently not advisable to live in the national capital, the local industries in the city and years of automobile pollution adding to the worsened air quality.