Solid cooking fuels contributing to rise of airway disease

It is worrying that as much as the Ministry of Health (MoH) is banking on preventive and promotive health, the majority of Kenyans are not aware of health hazards caused by unclean cooking energy, more so the use of firewood, a major contributor to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) that is silently killing individuals, with rural dwellers being mostly affected. 

Dr Joseph Aluoch, a pulmonologist, explains that COPD is a problem that is associated with difficulty in breathing because it blocks the airwaves. The disease, also known as airway disease, presents with cough, shortness of breath and cough with some sputum.

The most common cause of the disease is smoking. A smoker has at least a 10 per cent chance of contracting the disease. However, another major cause of the disease is the use of unclean cooking energy and environmental and industrial pollution.

“If you smoke 20 cigarettes per day for 20 years, you stand a high chance of contracting COPD,” explains Dr Oluoch.

There is no cure for COPD. Its treatment is mainly palliative where patients are helped to breathe better and if they have infections that they often have are provided with antibiotics. Inhalers are also used in case a patient develops breathing difficulties.

“Doctors conduct diagnosis historically. Someone who has been smoking for 40 years or has had TB in the past, or has been living next to or working in industries that expose them to pollutants is taken through a lung suction test, known as spirometry,” he adds.

Spirometry is a blowing test that helps diagnose and monitor lung conditions, where a physician measures how much air they can breathe out in one forced breath. The tests are conducted using a medical device called a spirometer.

The disease is common in adults, because it takes time to develop, and failure to treat it results in death. As the disease progresses, patients have to use oxygen at home because they cannot breathe independently.

There is no proper data for the disease, and the country suffers a shortage of experts and equipment to help in diagnosis. Some hospitals instead put patients with chronic pulmonary disease on asthma treatment.

As an MoH report indicates, although Kenya has made significant progress over the past decades in adopting clean energy, solid biomass remains the primary cooking fuel.

“Only about 20 per cent of all households use liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) as their primary cooking fuel. The number of electric cook stoves is extremely low, with around 3 per cent of all households owning an electric appliance,” reads a section of Household Air Pollution: A Silent Threat to Health and Environment.