Armah Frederick A, Odoi Justice O, Luginaah Isaac
Department of Environmental Science, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast , Ghana.
Environmental Specialist, P.O. Box OS 1455, Osu, Accra, Ghana.
Ecohealth. 2015 Jun;12(2):227-43. doi: 10.1007/s10393-013-0883-x. Epub 2013 Oct 18.
Most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa including Ghana still depend extensively on unprocessed solid cooking fuels with many people exposed on a daily basis to harmful emissions and other health risks. In this study, using complementary log-log multivariate models, we estimated the health effects of exposure to smoke from unprocessed wood in four regions of Ghana while controlling for socio-environmental and socio-demographic factors. The results show that the distribution of self-reported exposure to smoke was highest among participants in the Northern region, rural dwellers, the 25-49 age groups, individuals with no education, and married women. As expected, exposure to smoke was higher in crowded households and in communities without basic social amenities. Region, residential locality, housing quality (type of roofing, floor and exterior materials), self-reported housing condition, and access to toilet facilities were associated with self-reported exposure to solid fuel smoke. Participants living in urban areas were less likely (OR = 0.82, ρ ≤ 0.01) to be exposed to solid fuel smoke compared to their rural counterparts. An inverse relationship between self-reported housing condition and exposure to solid fuel smoke was observed and persisted even after adjustments were made for confounding variables in the demographic model. In Ghana, the cost and intermittent shortages of liquefied petroleum gas and other alternative fuel sources hold implications for the willingness of the poor to shift to their use. Thus, the poorest rural populations with nearly no cash income and electricity, but with access to wood and/or agricultural waste, are unlikely to move to clean fuels or use significantly improved stoves without large subsidies, which are usually not sustainable. However, there appears to be large populations between these extremes that can be targeted by efforts to introduce improved stoves.
包括加纳在内的撒哈拉以南非洲的大多数国家仍然广泛依赖未加工的固体烹饪燃料，许多人每天都暴露在有害排放物和其他健康风险中。在本研究中，我们使用互补对数-对数多元模型，在控制社会环境和社会人口因素的同时，估计了加纳四个地区接触未加工木材烟雾的健康影响。结果表明，自我报告的烟雾暴露分布在北部地区的参与者、农村居民、25-49岁年龄组、未受过教育的个人以及已婚妇女中最高。不出所料，在拥挤的家庭和没有基本社会设施的社区中，烟雾暴露更高。地区、居住地点、住房质量（屋顶、地板和外部材料类型）、自我报告的住房条件以及是否有厕所设施与自我报告的固体燃料烟雾暴露有关。与农村居民相比，城市地区的参与者接触固体燃料烟雾的可能性较小（OR = 0.82，ρ≤0.01）。观察到自我报告的住房条件与固体燃料烟雾暴露之间存在反比关系，即使在人口模型中对混杂变量进行调整后，这种关系仍然存在。在加纳，液化石油气和其他替代燃料来源的成本以及间歇性短缺对穷人转向使用这些燃料的意愿产生影响。因此，几乎没有现金收入和电力，但能够获得木材和/或农业废弃物的最贫困农村人口，如果没有大量补贴，不太可能转向清洁燃料或使用显著改进的炉灶，而这些补贴通常是不可持续的。然而，在这些极端情况之间似乎有大量人群，可以通过推广改进炉灶的努力来针对他们。
