Stove Shelters for Healthy Lungs

Pneumonia is one the most common causes of death in the slums, especially among babies and children.  The rates of pneumonia are driven so high due to living conditions in the slums.  The project I am working on at Revelation Life is introducing a few simple interventions that can make a big difference in preventing pneumonia.

One of these interventions is encouraging families to cook outside, rather than inside the house.  The majority of families in our slums cook on small charcoal stoves.  These charcoal stoves release harmful chemicals into the air.  Unlike the noxious smoke from firewood, many of these harmful gases are harder to smell and observe.  Yet they can do just as much damage to the lungs when inhaled for long periods of time.  Most slum homes are small, poorly ventilated and windowless, meaning that the fumes from indoor cooking linger constantly.  Yet, there are a variety of reasons why families do not feel comfortable cooking outside, especially when it rains.

According to the World Health Organization, in 2015 over 920,000 children died of pneumonia and over half of those deaths were caused because families cooked inside.  How tragic that each of these deaths was fully preventable.

There are many development organizations who aim to address this problem with a variety of approaches.  Most of these interventions are done in village settings, where the environmental factors at play are very different.  Many of these interventions center around cleaner cooking fuels, better ventilation/chimney systems, or more efficient stoves.  All of these interventions involve the introduction of outside resources which most families cannot afford.  In the case of alternative fuels, adopting such interventions involves a significant disruption to local markets.  Furthermore, few of these interventions have been proven to have a sizable impact in the long term.

Although these types of interventions may have merit, none seemed appropriate for the work Revelation Life does in communities. We want every outreach we do to be easily replicable, making use of local knowledge and resources that are within reach of most families.  For this reason, we have chosen to educate families about the dangers of pneumonia and household air pollution and train them to construct stove shelters.  

We are still in the early stages of this outreach, but the response from the community has been very favorable.  We have been providing hands on training to our Health Champions (who are like ambassadors for healthy living in their communities) on construction of stove shelters and they are very excited to spread the news.

Once slum families become aware of the risks of cooking inside, they may become open to more disruptive interventions in the future (such as cleaner burning fuels or different stove designs).  For now, stove shelters are a significant step toward promoting outdoor cooking and reducing household air pollution in the homes of these families.