Study Background:

Globally, about 3 billion people cook with biomass fuels such as wood and coal for their main energy source, which lead to approximately 1.6 million excess deaths a year and a substantial share of the global burden of disease. These problems arise when households burn solid fuels using inefficient combustion technologies. Reducing exposure to indoor air pollution is a critical initiative to lower the disease burden caused by biomass fuels.

In Ghana, over 90% of rural households cook with biomass fuels. Recent World Bank research suggests that use of inefficient biomass fuels is a major contributor to respiratory disease in children and adult women. This health burden is borne disproportionately by women and especially by children, for whom the risk of death in the first five years due to Acute Lower Respiratory Illness (ALRI) has been convincingly linked to indoor smoke exposures. Meeting domestic energy and health needs in a manner that addresses these problems is a major challenge for sustainable development in developing countries. To address this challenge, scientific data that quantify the magnitude of the current health burden duel to inefficient burning of biomass fuel is required to plan optimal solutions.
A collaborative effort between the Kintampo Health Research Center (KHRC) and the Biomass Working Group (BWG) at Columbia University seeks to carry out pilot research related to this important and understudied topic. We hope that this work will pave the way to a prospective intervention that will aim at reducing the burden of respiratory diseases in the study population. Results of the ultimate interventional study will be important in the control of respiratory diseases in Ghana and sub-Saharan Africa as a whole if found to be beneficial.

Specific Objectives and activities:

• Specific Objective 1:
  To determine household cooking practices. A survey among approximately 400 households using a standard questionnaire regarding fuel-use, cooking practices and other related topics has been conducted.
• Specific Objective 2:
  To assess biomass smoke exposure and health outcomes on a pilot scale. This will serve as background data on exposure levels and respiratory health, as well as demonstrate the feasibility of measuring personal exposure and relevant health outcomes in the field. The sample size of 30 households was selected based on household cook-stove location (indoor, semi-enclosed, outdoor) obtained from household survey (Objective 1).
• Specific Objective 3:
  To determine the feasibility of an intervention that is designed to evaluate the use of clean-burning cookstoves among household. This will help the joint BWG-Kintampo team plan in designing a larger interventional study in the same study area. This objective is currently being planned.

Progress of Study:

Household survey and exposure monitoring is complete. About 12, 400 households were interviewed. The tables below are a summary of primary fuel use and primary cooking stove used by the community members. Majority of households (79.6%) use wood in cooking with open stone (94.3%) as the major cookstove. The use of open stone cookstove in burning wood exposes the household to smoke.

Primary fuel used for cooking in the households

Main type of stove used to burn wood for cooking in the community

Contact: Dr. Kwaku Poku Asante
E-mail:kwakupoku.asante@kintampo-hrc.org