Nearly all children hospitalized for respiratory illnesses in the city are admitted to one of these two pediatric hospitals. Admissions data were obtained from computerized records of Children's Hospital 1 and Children's Hospital 2 (CH1 and CH2) in HCMC. The study focused on the short-term effects of daily average exposure to air pollutants on hospital admissions of children less than 5 years of age for ALRI, defined as pneumonia or bronchiolitis, in HCMC during 2003, 2004, and 2005. For these reasons, the results of this study have the potential to make an important contribution to the growing literature on the health effects of air pollution in Asia. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study of the health effects of air pollution in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Vietnam. ALRI, which comprises pneumonia and bronchiolitis, is the largest single cause of mortality among young children worldwide and is responsible for a substantial burden of disease among young children in developing countries. The aims of this study were to estimate the effect of exposure to air pollution on hospital admissions of young children for acute lower respiratory infection (ALRI*) and to explore whether such effects differed between poor children and other children.
The relations among health, air pollution, and poverty are likely to have important implications for public health and social policy, especially in areas such as the developing countries of Asia where air pollution levels are high and many live in poverty. Two major reasons why this may be true are that the poor experience higher levels of exposure to air pollution, and they are more vulnerable to its effects-in other words, due to poorer nutrition, less access to medical care, and other factors, they experience more health impact per unit of exposure. There is emerging evidence, largely from studies in Europe and North America, that economic deprivation increases the magnitude of morbidity and mortality related to air pollution.
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