Living with bricks

In the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal there some 500 brick kilns. Women, children and men migrate from rural areas to the Valley for six months during the dry season from November to May as workers in the brick kilns. The brick kilns lack basic services such as safe drinking water, sanitation, health and school facilities. The families who live in primitive shacks made of unburned mud bricks often suffer from respiratory diseases, fever, diarrhoea and stomach pain. The brick kilns are a major cause of the heavy air pollution in the Kathmandu Valley.