Breaking new ground to promote change

Abstract

In this issue of The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, we publish a Commission entitled “Respiratory risks of household air pollution in low and middle income countries”. With around 3 billion people exposed to the threat of such pollution every day and its consequent effects on respiratory symptoms and disease, this was an obvious topic to cover as our first Commission. We were delighted to work with the authors of this project, and would like to especially acknowledge the efforts of the two senior authors, Prof Stephen B Gordon and Prof William J Martin II, who have ensured that the paper came to fruition. The problem of household air pollution is most prevalent in low-income and middle-income countries, hence the focus of the report, but high-income countries do not escape unscathed, as emphasised by a linked comment from Dr Neil Schluger. Lancet group Commissions have at their core the philosophy of promoting change, and we hope that the Commission, and its associated content, will provide the impetus to drive change and tackle what is a preventable, but devastating, burden on the health of the world's population, not least in terms of the morbidity and mortality associated with acute and chronic respiratory diseases.