Outdoor air pollution and respiratory health

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 55.8 million of global deaths occurred in 2012; the distribution of these deaths across three major cause groups showed a mortality of 23% for communicable, maternal, perinatal conditions, and nutritional deficiencies, 67.8% for chronic and noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) and 9.2% for injuries.1 NCDs deaths (37.8 million) were in particular due to cardiovascular diseases, cancers and chronic respiratory diseases and nearly 73% occur in low-and middle-income countries, especially among those who do not have the resources to improve the quality of life and where prevention is not a priority.1 In 2012, in South-East Asia and Western Pacific regions there were about 26.5 million deaths (47.8% of worldwide deaths), of which 62% and 84% due to NCDs, respectively. The World Health Organization showed that NCDs deaths are projected to increase by 32% globally between 2015 and 2030 (to 51 million deaths). The regions that will have the largest total number of NCDs deaths are South-East Asia (13 million deaths in 2030) and the Western Pacific (14 million deaths in 2030).