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North Africa, by Economy, 2019
FIGURE 3.8
Death Rates Attributable to AAP in the Middle East and North Africa, by Economy, 2019
-standardized Deaths per 100,000 population, age 200
150
100
50
0 AlgeriaBahrainDjibouti Egypt, Arab Rep.Iran, Islamic Rep. IraqJordanKuwaitLebanon LibyaMaltaMoroccoOman QatarSaudi Arabia Syrian Arab RepublicTunisia United Arab EmiratesWest Bank and GazaYemen, Rep.
Source: Data from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) tool of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) Global Health Data Exchange (http://ghdx.healthdata.org/gbd-results-tool). Note: Age-standardization accounts for demographic (age structure) differences between populations to make disease-related data comparable across those populations. Error bars indicate confidence intervals. AAP = ambient air pollution.
high—are recorded in Jordan and Tunisia.8 In addition—and in contrast to the other economies—Djibouti and the Republic of Yemen exhibit high death rates attributable to household air pollution (not shown).
The estimated numbers of deaths directly related to AAP are substantial. Estimates by the IHME link more than 270,000 deaths in the Middle East and North Africa in 2019 to this type of risk.
Air pollution also leads to increased hospitalizations in the region. In Egypt, increases of PM10 at concentrations of 10 ug/m3 were associated with increased hospitalization rates of 1–2 percent for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and bronchitis (Heger, Zens, and Meisner 2019). Similarly, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, days with higher air pollution were also associated with more hospitalizations in Tehran (Khalilzadeh et al. 2009), and days with high PM2.5 concentrations led to increased admissions to hospital emergency departments (Heger and Sarraf 2018).
More specifically, air pollution is considered a major environmental risk factor associated with a range of diseases including asthma, lung cancer, and ventricular hypertrophy, among others (Ghorani-Azam, RiahiZanjani, and Balali-Mood 2016). Air pollution is also associated with
