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I am so happy to be here with all of you this morning, especially when I look around and see colleagues from different sectors – government agencies at both national and city level, community organisations, UN agencies and other partners – here to not only talk air pollution, but ready and willing to join hands to take action.
The right to breathe clean air is one of the most fundamental rights of every person on our planet – for the obvious reason that we all have to breathe to survive. Yet the right to clean air is not currently enjoyed by most people in Viet Nam – and the country is paying a huge price for this, especially in health.
Around the world, air pollution causes 7 million deaths every year. Here in Viet Nam, at least 70,000 people die because of air pollution every year, from acute respiratory illnesses, exacerbation of pre-existing illnesses such as asthma, and other conditions such stroke, heart disease, and lung cancer.
Let me take a moment to put that into context for you. 70,000 deaths per year means that every 7.5 minutes, on average, someone in Viet Nam dies because of an illness that was caused by exposure to air pollution. By the time we finish the opening segment of our event together this morning, 8 more people will have died.
70,000 deaths, every year – that is almost double the total number of people who died in Viet Nam during the COVID-19 pandemic.
So, we should be treating air pollution the same way we treated COVID-19 – as a public health emergency.
Effectively responding to a public health emergency requires action at several different levels: in the short term, we must do everything we can to protect people most exposed and most at risk. But we also need to take action over the medium and long-term to tackle the root cause of what is making people sick, in this case, the sources of pollution – including fossil fuels, traffic, and burning of rubbish and crops.
This is why I am so happy to be here today, joining hands in the ‘Clean Air, Green City’ campaign – because this is a demonstration of our collective commitment to working towards better air quality for the people of Ha Noi in the short, medium and long terms. I want to sincerely thank colleagues from the Ha Noi City Government and the Ha Noi Women’s Union for your leadership on this crucially important environmental and public health issue.
While I began these brief remarks with some grim statistics about the health impacts of air pollution, I would like to end on a note of optimism. And that is to say, that while air pollution is clearly very bad for health, the counter-factual is also true: clean air and blue skies are great for people’s health and wellbeing. I know how much happier I feel when I wake up and look outside the window to see that the sky is blue. Clean air will also create real benefits for communities, society and the economy of this city which we all love, and for Viet Nam’s society and economy as a whole.
So please count on WHO’s full and unwavering support for this work to ensure the basic right to clean air can be enjoyed by everyone in Ha Noi and beyond in Viet Nam, so that together we can create a brighter, greener, and healthier future for all.