Clean Air Day: Dia Mirza recalls terrifying health scare involving her son when he was unable to breathe; says, “We had thought it was all behind us until…”
Dia Mirza has consistently spoken about environmental concerns and their impact on public health. On Clean Air Day, the actress opened up about a deeply personal experience involving her son, recalling a period when pollution aggravated his respiratory problems and left the family rushing him to the hospital.
Speaking about her son’s health journey, Dia recalled that he was born extremely premature and required extensive medical care. She said, “He was born extremely premature which means his airwaves (air passages) were narrow at birth, and it takes them much longer to get stronger. Therefore, they are (premature babies) a lot more susceptible to getting unwell and their frequency of getting ill is higher than a child who has had a full term. I remember that he coughed non-stop for six hours and no matter what we did, it just wouldn’t stop. It was excruciating and unbearable. We are parents who have seen him through some pretty terrifying experiences right from his birth, including his birth. He was born in the sixth month, he was 820 gms, he was in the NICU for over two months, he went through life-saving surgery twice.”
While the family believed those difficult experiences were behind them, Dia said they were confronted with another frightening situation when her son was almost two years old. Recalling the incident, she said, “We have been through all of that, and we had thought it was all behind us until the pollution got to him. He was almost 2 years old, and we had to rush him to the hospital, and we discovered that he was unable to breathe. Coughing was his body’s way of trying to cope…”
Dia also recalled an incident during her son’s sports day, which took place when pollution levels were high. She said her son wore a mask but felt uncomfortable and consequently kept his distance from his friends and teachers. “He wore his mask and he got to the playground… he watched his friends from a distance; he refused to go and meet them and his teachers because he was wearing a mask. He felt uncomfortable about it, and this was not a small thing,” she added.
Addressing the wider impact of air pollution, Dia highlighted how exposure is particularly severe for communities and workers who spend significant amounts of time outdoors. She went on to share, “In 2021, air pollution was linked to 2.1 million deaths in India, globally more than 700,000 children under the age of five died from causes linked to air pollution. But this burden is not shared equally. Communities living beside highways, landfills, construction sites, factories, and power plants face greater exposure; so do street vendors, traffic police, sanitation workers and construction workers, people who work outdoors and cannot retreat indoors when the air becomes dangerous. They are on the frontlines of polluted air.”
Emphasising the need for cleaner air to be accessible to everyone, the actress stated, “Clean air should never be a privilege,” while acknowledging that her own position allows her family certain protections. She went on to add, “We come from a place of privilege. We are able to protect our children at some level. But there are so many children in our country and in the world who are in street situation and are exposed to all of this all the time with no protection.”
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