Smoke from open-fire cooking kills more than four million people every year. In Malawi, a research team is conducting the largest ever study into the effects of indoor smoke and hopes its results will save millions of young lives.’
The study focuses on whether replacing indoor cookfires with cleaner-burning stoves can prevent pneumonia in young children.
Here, lead researcher Dr Kevin Mortimer explains his hopes for a potentially life-saving project.
According to the WHO, throughout sub-Saharan Africa, almost one million children every year die from the disease. Worldwide that number could be more than four million.
Redesigning the stove on which millions cook, the researchers believe, could be the solution to cutting this death toll.
There are several different types of clean cook stove. The ones the team are testing use the same fuel as open fires, wood (or biomass) but they incorporate a battery-powered fan that blows air through a contained furnace.
This produces a more efficient, less smoky fire.
Dr Mortimer is a senior clinical lecturer and consultant in respiratory medicine at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and Aintree University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. The Cooking and Pneumonia Study is funded, in part, by the UK Medical Research Council.
