Note: World Lung Foundation united with The Union North America. From January 2016, the combined organization is known as “Vital Strategies.”
(New York, USA) – World Lung Foundation and the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves today awarded their first major research grants to assess the health impact of cleaner fuels and cookstove designs on women and children in developing countries. Nearly three billion people (500 million households) rely on solid fuels to power rudimentary cookstoves, and the World Health Organization estimates household air pollution (HAP) to be the fifth greatest health risk in developing countries.
WLF joins the Alliance to ensure sound science is at the center of global efforts to significantly reduce the 2 million annual deaths attributable to HAP worldwide. WLF will contribute $300,000 over three years to support funding for three research projects in Ghana, Nigeria and Nepal over the next two years.
Lung Disease Prevention in Ghana
Dr. Darby Jack of The Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University will lead a collaboration between the Kintampo Health Research Centre in Ghana and Mailman’s Center for Infection and Immunity and Department of Environmental Health Sciences. The Ghana research project aims to standardize physician diagnosis of all pneumonia and severe pneumonia then use Mass Tag PCR, a state-of-the-art molecular tool developed at Columbia University, to identify which lung disease pathogens are most responsible for child pneumonia caused by exposure to household air pollution and which can be eradicated by cleaner fuels and cookstoves.
Saving Mothers and Newborns in Nigeria
Dr. Christopher Olopade of the University of Chicago will lead a research project in Nigeria, where 90 million people and 70% of the rural population use solid fuels for household energy. Up to 17% of infants born in Nigerian hospitals are reported as being born with low birth weight and as many as 20% are born preterm. The researchers will work with Project Gaia, a US-based NGO, to distribute 150 ethanol stoves using bioethanol that is produced sustainably in Nigeria and has achieved reductions in personal exposures that meet suggested WHO guidelines. They will then seek to identify whether the use of ethanol-fueled stoves will reduce pregnant women’s exposures to common harmful pollutants and reduce adverse pregnancy outcomes when compared to the outcomes associated with wood-burning stoves. In addition to evaluating health outcomes, this project will also evaluate stove use/likability of the ethanol stoves using temperature based monitoring.
Reducing Lung Infections in Nepalese Children
Dr. James Tielsch of the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health will lead a project in Nepal investigating the link between acute lower respiratory infection (ALRI) – the world’s leading cause of death among children under age 5 – and open burning of biomass fuel sources in the home. It will assess the reduction in pollution and health impacts made possible by replacing traditional open burning stoves with “improved” stoves. Furthermore, it will compare the relative impact of cleaner-burning biomass stoves to liquid petroleum gas (LPG) stoves on the incidence of ALRI and adverse reproductive outcomes.
Dr. Neil Schluger, Chief Scientific Officer of World Lung Foundation commented, “Every year, two million die because of household pollution caused by their cookstoves. Those deaths are mostly from lung disease, and occur overwhelmingly in rural communities in developing countries. However, there is little data to support specific solutions being developed and promoted by private industry, academia and governments. We are delighted to join the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves and believe these grants will help us guide scarce resources toward the fuels and designs that will save the most lives”
“World Lung Foundation’s crucial support for children’s health research comes as the Alliance commissions a range of studies to further establish the link between household air pollution, human health, livelihood, and the environment,” said Radha Muthiah, Executive Director of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. “The Alliance looks forward to a robust partnership with World Lung Foundation as we combat this silent killer in the homes of almost half the world’s population.”
About the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves
The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves is a public-private partnership led by the United Nations Foundation to save lives, improve livelihoods, empower women, and combat climate change by creating a thriving global market for clean and efficient household cooking solutions. The Alliance’s 100 by ‘20 goal calls for 100 million households to adopt clean and efficient cookstoves and fuels by 2020. The Alliance is working with its public, private and non-profit partners to help overcome the market barriers that currently impede the production, deployment, and use of clean cookstoves in developing countries. For more information, please visit www.cleancookstoves.org .