City of opportunities can choke your lungs too

A few years ago, Jeetu Pathak - a BSc (IT) graduate from Assam - made his way to the city, like so many others from around the country to explore opportunities of work in the burgeoning IT sector. A few days into his stay and he began to develop breathing problems and was wheezing and sneezing all the time.  

In the next few months, Jeetu’s condition deteriorated to such an extent that he finally decided to see a doctor.

“The doctor said that I had developed a congestion in the chest due to substances in the air. This caused the vents in the lungs to swell, thereby reducing air intake and causing congestion and heavy breathing. The symptoms were all there - dry cough, heavy breathing, heaviness and blockage in the chest. The doctor gave me some medicines and an inhaler that helped me quite a bit,” he said. When he went home for a few days, his condition was much better. “By the time I got home, I was back to my good health. So I decided to leave Bengaluru for good,” Pathak said.

Pulmonary diseases up
While doctors in the city are seeing an increasing number of pulmonary-related ailments due to the growing air pollution levels, migrants seem to be a group that has been severely affected by such conditions.    

On an average, Dr Ranganath R, consultant pulmonologist, Narayana Hrudayalaya, Hosur Road, sees 25 to 50 patients daily. Of these, 50 per cent are those from West Bengal and the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu.

He said that the condition also occurred among people from coastal regions who might have prior conditions of such ailments and which got aggravated due to humidity and air pollution here. “As part of a study that was done around 2011 in a number of Indian cities, including Bengaluru, it was found that nearly four per cent of the population here was always wheezing,” he said.

Imran Uddin, an employee at a prominent e-commerce firm who hails from Andhra Pradesh, has been working in the city for the past three years. However, it was only since January this year that he began to develop severe sneezing and wheezing.

“I checked with a doctor and he told me that I had severe bronchitis. I never had such a condition before. My doctor told me that such cases were very common here,” he said.
Dr Gyan Kej, a general physician at Apoorva Diagnostic Centre, Indiranagar, said although such ailments mostly occur seasonally, migrants are more prone to contract them.

“Over the years, it is bound to get worse with increasing pollution levels,” he said. On an average, Dr Kej gets five to 10 patients with pulmonary-related ailments, of which at least one or two are not natives of the city.
DH News Service