The ManicaPost
Catherine Murombedzi
EXPERTS are brainstorming on lung diseases giving feedback and new scientific findings at the 47th World Union Conference on Lung Diseases taking place in Liverpool, UK.
| Pneumonia is a major killer of children under five years and developing countries feel the burden of the disease. A country understudied is Malawi where children under five years die in large numbers from this. A total of 300 children in every 1 000 die from pneumonia in Malawi annually. |
Experts took time to study why it was so and came up with a number of possibilities which if addressed could bring relief.
In Malawi, the main source of energy is wood and cinders are common even in town where they are sold by the road side in large 90kg sacks.
The two-year study by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine was led by Kevin Mortimer in Malawi in villages such as Chikhwawa and Chilumba.
The Malawi experience is not far from Zimbabwe, as some rural populations also use wood, cow dung and anything that burns.
Exposure to smoke produced when biomass fuels (animal or plant material) are burned in open fires is a major avoidable risk factor for pneumonia. In Malawi, at least 95 percent of households depend on biomass. Smoke from burning biomass also causes other health problems including chronic lung diseases, lung cancer, heart disease, stillbirth and low birth weight.
It is believed to be a contributing factor to global climate change too.
In Africa, 700 million households burn biomass fuels to provide energy for cooking, heating and lighting. The problem extends around the globe where half of the world’s population depend on biomass fuels for their day-to-day energy requirements. Around 4 million people die every year from the effects of biomass smoke. A trial in Malawi had 150 households randomly selected and these had their open fires replaced with efficient biomass fan assisted cook stoves.
The outcome of pneumonia in under fives was noted. Another trial had 1 000 people measuring the impact of better ventilated cook stove on lung health in children in the same country.
The study conducted by Kevin Mortimer of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine has been the cutting edge of this research.
An advanced cook stove reduces smoke emissions to very low levels and is a clean high tech cooking method.
The adverse health effects of domestic smoke inhalation is a problem in low and middle income countries where open fires are lit in a closed room usually a kitchen with very poor ventilation.
To show the effects of smoke and poor ventilation a number of fires were lit in inside a miniaturised replica housing on the plaza at the ACC Arena in Liverpool at the conference to demonstrate air pollution and fire risks.
At the same time an open fire was lit and placed in a shed. The second structure hosted and ACE 1 cook stove which is an advanced cook stove which reduces smoke emissions by 90%.
The trial in Malawi has shown that if all households could get the ACE1 cook stove, pneumonia among children would be greatly reduced and lives saved.
Still on use of biomass in Zimbabwe we have similar experiences where animal dung and anything that burns is used by rural households for energy. With depleted forests the challenge grows and anything even plastic containers are used for lighting fires.
In future columns I will bring more on the ACE1 cook stove which can also be of use in Zimbabwe.
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