New Regional Director of the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s Western Pacific Regional Office, Dr Takeshi Kasai, recently visited the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health (ILAQH) at QUT. The facility is a WHO Collaborating Centre for Air Quality and Health, led by Professor Lidia Morawska.
On Tuesday, 26 February 2019, Dr. Takeshi Kasai, who has just taken over the position of Regional Director of the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s Western Pacific Regional Office in early February, visited the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health (ILAQH) at QUT, a WHO Collaborating Centre for Air Quality and Health since 2004, led by Professor Lidia Morawska. Dr. Kasai was particularly interested and impressed by the low-cost sensor program led by the ILAQH, and its application towards air quality monitoring and energy transition in the Pacific Island countries.
This program was presented to Dr. Kasai by Professor Lidia Morawska (CAR Chief Investigator), Dr Tom Cole-Hunter (CAR Postdoctoral Research Fellow), and others of the ILAQH Sensors team. The program is supported by the CAR through several seed funding grants and Dr Cole-Hunter’s fellowship, and will next expand into the Solomon Islands to remove cultural barriers against transition to clean cooking methods. Pilot work in Fiji started in September of 2018, to assess children’s exposure to air pollution in the region, its drivers, the burden of disease attributable to it and how transition to clean energy would mitigate it.