The World Health Organisation says that air pollution contributes to seven to eight million premature deaths a year, but only one person, Ella Kissi-Debrah, has ever had air pollution on their death certificate. She has it on her death certificate because of a long struggle led by her mother, Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, supported by doctors and lawyers. On Saturday 7 September, International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies and Clean Air, about 20 of us gathered in Mountsfield Park, London, a park that Ella loved and where she played, to Ride for Ella. Her mother saw us off and greeted us back. I’ve met Rosamund before, and like every campaigner for clean air, I knew about Ella having air pollution on her death certificate, but I must confess that I didn’t know the full story until I read it on the website of the Ella Roberta Foundation, a foundation founded by Rosamund.1 You can read it there, and I urge you to do so as it’s a story full of important messages. In brief, Ella was born in 2004 and was a bright child keen on reading, gymnastics, football, and music. Just before her seventh birthday she developed a cough and was eventually diagnosed as having asthma, a condition that led to 30 emergency admissions and her death in February 2013. She had multiple tests, almost all of them unhelpful, but no doctor ever mentioned air pollution as a contributing cause. Nor did Rosamund ever consider it while Ella was alive. In retrospect this might seem extraordinary, but I have written before about how the medical profession has failed woefully in recognising the importance of air pollution—and I am to blame as much as anybody.2 In my 13 years as editor of the BMJ we published little on …

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 艾拉的旅程


世界卫生组织表示，空气污染每年导致七到八百万人过早死亡，但只有埃拉·基西-黛布拉 (Ella Kissi-Debrah) 的死亡证明上有空气污染的记录。她的死亡证明上有这一点，是因为她的母亲罗莎蒙德·基西-黛布拉 (Rosamund Kissi-Debrah) 在医生和律师的支持下进行了长期的斗争。 9 月 7 日星期六，国际清洁空气日，争取蓝天和清洁空气，我们大约 20 个人聚集在伦敦芒茨菲尔德公园，这是艾拉喜爱的公园，也是她玩耍的地方，为艾拉骑行。她的母亲送我们回来，并迎接我们。我以前见过罗莎蒙德，就像每一个清洁空气运动的倡导者一样，我知道艾拉的死亡证明上有空气污染的信息，但我必须承认，直到我在艾拉的网站上读到，我才知道整个故事。罗伯塔基金会 (Roberta Foundation)，罗莎蒙德 (Rosamund) 创立的一个基金会。1 您可以在那里阅读它，我强烈建议您这样做，因为这是一个充满重要信息的故事。简而言之，Ella出生于2004年，是一个聪明的孩子，热衷于阅读、体操、足球和音乐。就在她七岁生日之前，她出现了咳嗽症状，最终被诊断出患有哮喘，这种疾病导致 30 次紧急入院，并于 2013 年 2 月去世。她接受了多项检查，几乎所有检查都没有帮助，但没有医生提到空气污染作为一个促成原因。艾拉在世时，罗莎蒙德也从未考虑过这一点。回想起来，这似乎很不寻常，但我之前曾写过关于医学界如何在认识到空气污染的重要性方面不幸失败的文章，我和任何人一样应该受到谴责。2 在我担任 BMJ 编辑的 13 年里，我们发表了很少关于…