Kintampo (B/A), Dec. 10, GNA - The Kintampo Health Research Centre (KHRC) has began trials into harmful cooking practices, which emits smoke, known as biomass linked to some adverse respiratory tract infections.

The study, known as the Biomass project, is a collaborative research activity between the centre and the Biomass Working Group at the Columbia University in the United States. The results of the research would be important in finding an intervention to control respiratory diseases in Ghana and Africa if found successful and beneficial.

Dr Kwaku Poku Asante, a Clinical Research Fellow at KHRC, told journalists from the African Media and Malaria Research Network on a visit to the centre that most people in the rural areas used charcoal and firewood for cooking and children suffer from the harmful effects of the smoke because mothers strap them on their backs while cooking in an enclosed area.

He said pneumonia and other respiratory diseases are linked to such bad cooking practices. Dr Poku Asante said a survey had already been conducted among 140,000 people in Kintampo North and Kintampo South districts to gather information about their cooking practices. He said exposure instruments have been tested among 33 households to measure the amount of harmful smoke emitting from those cooking practices.

Dr Poku Asante said the data is being analysed to facilitate an intervention that would be used to source for funds to build stoves that would deal effectively with the harmful smoke. Information from KHRS indicates that reducing exposure to indoor air pollution is a critical initiative because globally about three billion people cook with biomass fuels that leads to 1.6 million deaths a year.

In Ghana, over 97 per cent rural households cook with biomass fuel.