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On Monday, a day after Diwali, a haze of smog hung in New Delhi. The dip in air quality after the burst of fireworks kept doctors at India’s first pollution outpatient department (OPD) at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital (RML) on their toes. Only patients were missing.
While the national capital is grappling with high pollution levels since October-end, except when the spell was briefly broken by sudden rain last week, patients eluded the speciality OPD for the second day of operation. The weekly clinic, inaugurated in the first week of November, is open on Mondays between 2 and 4 pm.
Senior chest physician Desh Deepak attributed the absence of patients largely to a lack of awareness. “People don’t know that such a service is being provided in the hospital.”
The medical OPD of the hospital, which was operating as a pollution clinic on Monday, had doctors from various departments in designated rooms, with signboards in the corridor visible for the potential patient.
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Photo: Anushka Bhardwaj
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Deepak added that since many would not know that they can be treated in a pollution OPD, the general OPD would have to identify those who could be referred to the former. “There is no specific mechanism to establish if a disease is caused by pollution. However, we can evaluate the symptoms and account for the circumstances to observe a pattern among patients,” he said.
Ajay Shukla, director and medical superintendent at RML, felt changing people’s mindset was a challenge. “Many people feel that not much can be done about pollution and it is a natural phenomenon that they have to live with. This prevents them from taking respiratory diseases seriously.” He added that the hospital is also looking into various factors including how many people are actually willing to visit an OPD on a Monday afternoon.
Like every season, the number of patients with respiratory diseases has seen a hike recently.
“We have seen almost a 30 per cent surge in the number of patients with respiratory ailments,” said Shukla, adding that professional help is required to identify air pollution related ailments. “Sometimes, carcinogenic particles can enter our body and have long-term health impacts.”
Doctors at RML view the pollution OPD as a long-term initiative. “Some impact should be visible in the coming months. We expect better patient awareness about the OPD when pollution peaks next year,” said Deepak.
Doctors from five departments — respiratory medicine; ear, nose and throat; ophthalmology; dermatology; and psychiatry — are involved in the pollution OPD. It aims to combat pollution-related diseases in a focussed manner and ease pressure on the general OPD on days when the city sees high air quality index (AQI).
On Diwali morning, New Delhi recorded an AQI of 218 — the best since 2016 on the festive occasion. On Monday, with an AQI of 358, the city slipped into the “very poor” category after swinging between “moderate” and “poor” on Sunday.
According to the data provided by the Delhi Pollution Control Committee, the PM10 (particles with a diameter of 10 micrometres or less) concentration peaked at 1,632 micrograms per cubic metre (µg/m3) at 2 am, when the 24-hour standard is 100 µg/m3.
The level stayed in excess of 1,000 µg/m3 between 11 pm on Sunday and 4 am on Monday. Compared to last year, the concentration of PM2.5 and PM10 increased by 45 per cent and 33 per cent on Diwali.
