Intended for healthcare professionals

  1. News & Views
  2. Supporting the school...
  3. Supporting the school climate strike with a public health “work-in”
Letters Children strike for their future

Supporting the school climate strike with a public health “work-in”

BMJ 2019; 367 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l6766 (Published 05 December 2019) Cite this as: BMJ 2019;367:l6766

All rapid responses

Rapid responses are electronic comments to the editor. They enable our users to debate issues raised in articles published on bmj.com. A rapid response is first posted online. If you need the URL (web address) of an individual response, simply click on the response headline and copy the URL from the browser window. A proportion of responses will, after editing, be published online and in the print journal as letters, which are indexed in PubMed. Rapid responses are not indexed in PubMed and they are not journal articles. The BMJ reserves the right to remove responses which are being wilfully misrepresented as published articles or when it is brought to our attention that a response spreads misinformation.

From March 2022, the word limit for rapid responses will be 600 words not including references and author details. We will no longer post responses that exceed this limit.

The word limit for letters selected from posted responses remains 300 words.

Schoolchildren’s response against air pollutions in Pakistan

Dear Editor,

In accordance with the United Nations Paris agreement, school children around the world have been participating in a “school strike for climate chaos” for their future [1, 2]. Similarly, a group of school-going students of Pakistan in earlier November filed a petition against the Government of Punjab in the Lahore High Court for the “violation of their fundamental right” due to inadequate Government’s responses against air pollution, [3] which raises significant human rights concerns as residents were complaining of sore throats, itchy eyes, headaches and other ailments linked to inhaling toxic material through air pollution.

In this regard, Amnesty International showed serious concerns regarding air pollution of Pakistan and wrote a letter to the Minister (State) of Climate Change that every person in Lahore, provincial capital of Pakistan’s Punjab Province and a city of 11 million people, is at risk due to a thick blanket of smog--sunlight barely reaching the ground. Also, Amnesty called on the Government of Pakistan to act on its human rights obligations as well as to take "urgent action" to protect people from the adverse consequences of poor air quality because Lahore has not had a single day of healthy air this year. If Government agencies continue in business-as-usual mode, other major cities of Pakistan will also face a Lahore-like situation in the near future.

To be able to overcome air pollution, Government agencies should acknowledge the problem and create awareness, as well as strictly implement the recommendation of the “Court-appointed Smog Commission” and the “Punjab Clean Air Action Plan” which seeks to monitor air-quality in urban and rural areas, to foster a massive energy and technology transition in industry and a paradigm shift in waste management and mobility transition with more disruptive measures.

References:
1. Moberly T. Children strike for their future. BMJ 2019; 366: l5704. (doi: 10.1136/bmj.l5704)
2. McCartney G. Campbell R. Conacher A. and Mackie P. Supporting the school climate strike with a public health “work-in”. BMJ 2019; 367: l6766. (doi: 10.1136/bmj.l6766)
3. Schoolchildren move high court over hazardous smog in Lahore. Daily Times. (https://dailytimes.com.pk/495769/schoolchildren-move-high-court-over-haz...) (Accessed, December 16, 2019).
4. Pakistan: Hazardous air puts health of millions at risk. Amnesty International. (https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa33/1370/2019/en/) (Accessed, December 16, 2019).

Competing interests: No competing interests

17 December 2019
Musaddique Hussain 1,2,3
Pharmacist (Doctor)
Abdul Majeed1,4, Ikhlaq Hussain5, Imran Imran4, Muhammad Fawad Rasool4, Qasim Barkat3, Ximei Wu3
1 School of Pharmacy, The University of Faisalabad, Faisalabad, 38,000, Pakistan; 2 Faculty of Pharmacy, The Islamia university of Bahawalpur, 63100, Pakistan; 3 Department of Pharmacology and The Key Respiratory Drug Research Laboratory of China Food and Drug Administration, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou City, 310058, China; 4 Faculty of Pharmacy, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, 60000, Pakistan; 5 Department of Urology, Nishtar Medical University, Multan, 60000, Pakistan
1 School of Pharmacy, The university of Faisalabad, 38,000, Faisalabad, Pakistan; 2 Faculty of Pharmacy, The Islamia university of Bahawalpur, 63100, Pakistan
Back to top