Are We To Be Blamed For This 5-Year-Old’s Asthma?

Children as young as Suditi are developing asthma before they can even walk and a major reason is the pollution.

Is this really how we want our children to grow up?

(Photo: FIT)

Suditi loves to dance, but she is no longer able to go for her classes.

After living in the United States for 2 years, Suditi’s family moved to Delhi, and then began her struggle with something that we all do involuntarily; breathing. Just five years old, she already has to restrict her everyday activities because of Delhi’s pollution.

On World Asthma Day, we are talking about how India has witnessed a huge rise in asthma among children in the past decade due to a spike in environmental pollution. 10-15 percent of children under the age of 10 in the country suffer from the respiratory disease. Children as young as Suditi are developing asthma before they can even walk.

Her condition worsens at times of high pollution and winters, forcing her to miss school.

She has to use her nebuliser 5-6 times a day to take her medicine. The doctor told her parents to move out of Delhi for her condition to get better. But to uproot a family and just up and move is not that easy.

Is this really how we want our children to grow up?

Video Editor: Kunal Mehra
Cameraperson: Abhay Sharma

(This article was first published on 2 May 2017)