Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, nine, lived metres away from South Circular Road in Lewisham, one of London’s most polluted streets. An asthma patient, she had visited the hospital nearly 30 times in three years. After a series of seizures, Ella suffered a serious attack in February 2013 which she couldn’t survive. 

In India, two mothers were following the developments. “That little girl didn’t deserve to die,” says Bhavreen Kandhari, a resident of Delhi’s Defence Colony, who together with mother of two and Pune resident Anuja Bali Karthikeyan, were tracking Ella’s case via online news reports. Last December, she became the first person in Britain to officially have air pollution listed as cause for death on her death certificate. After her mother, Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah campaigned for seven years to overturn a 2014 ruling that had not taken into account whether air pollution had caused the 27 asthma attacks, an inquest last year found that air pollution had “made a material contribution” to Ella’s death. In a landmark ruling, Coroner Phillip Barlow said that to prevent similar deaths in future, the government must reduce existing particulate matter pollution targets so that they comply with World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. Campaigners and legal experts said the verdict could push the British government to get tough on air pollution.