Health campaigners are voicing concerns that the issue is being neglected – despite the devastating death toll around the world

Seven million people die each year from illnesses attributable to air pollution, yet it has never had global recognition in the same way as Aids, tuberculosis and malaria, and now there are growing calls from the health sector for that to change.

Relative to other health issues that have access to billion-dollar global funds, air pollution has a far greater health impact, said Christa Hasenkopf, the director of clean air programmes at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (Epic).

Pollution contributes to millions of deaths every year from conditions such as heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cancer or pneumonia. That exceeds the 630,000 who died of Aids in 2022, the 608,000 malaria deaths in the same year and even the 1 million who die annually as a result of diarrhoea.