Household Fuel Consumption Based on Multiple Fuel Use Strategies: A Case Study in Kibera Slums

AbstractRecently, it has been argued that, contrary to earlier energy ladder thinking, households in developing countries do not switch to modern energy sources but instead tend to consume a combination of fuels. This article aimed to gather a better understanding of the relative importance of fuel substitution and fuel complementation, especially among charcoal, fuel briquettes and kerosene, and the factors associated with these choices. In this paper we present results of a household survey conducted during October 2010 in Kibera slums in Nairobi, Kenya. The results revealed that widely various household characteristics influence demand for charcoal and briquettes for cooking. In addition to these factors, the household income level affects the use of kerosene for cooking. At the same time, we found the fact households tend to switch to multiple fuels strategy as their increasing in income instead of completely switching from the consumption of traditional fuels to modern energy sources

Implications of Charcoal Briquette Produced by Local Communities on Livelihoods and Environment in Nairobi Kenya

The residents of Nairobi, Kenya, use 700 tonnes of charcoal per day, producing about 88 tonnes of charcoal dust that is found in most of the charcoal retailing stalls that is disposed of in water drainage systems or in black garbage heaps. The high costs of cooking fuel results in poor households using unhealthy materials such as plastic waste. Further, poor households are opting to cook foods that take a short time to prepare irrespective of their nutritional value. This article presents experiences with community self-help groups producing charcoal fuel briquettes from charcoal dust in poorer nieghbourhoods of Nairobi for home use and sale. Households that produced charcoal fuel briquettes for own use and those that bought them saved 70% and 30% of money spent on cooking energy respectively. The charcoal fuel briquettes have been found to be environmentally beneficial since they produce less smoke and increase total cooking energy by more than 15%, thereby saving an equivalent volume of trees that would be cut down for charcoal. Charcoal briquette production is a viable opportunity for good quality and affordable cooking fuel. Bioenergy and waste management initiatives should promote recovery of organic by-products for charcoal briquette production

Household biochar production and use by smallholder farmers in Kenya

About 40% of the world population lack access to clean cooking fuels. In rural sub-Saharan Africa the majority of people prepare their meals with firewood on open three stone fires. Biochar-producing microgasification cookstoves provide an opportunity to reduce fuel consumption and reduce the indoor air pollution in the cooking area, while use of biochar in soils sequesters carbon and increases agricultural yields, thereby improving livelihoods, especially for women. This paper presents findings from transdisciplinary research that started with long-term biochar field trials established in 2006. During recent years this research has involved 150 farming households at 3 locations in Kenya that produce biochar in locally manufactured GASTOV Top-lit Updraft (TLUD) gasifier cookstoves and use the biochar in their own fields. Fuel use, indoor concentrations of CO, CO2 and PM2.5 in cooking areas, and biochar production potential was measured in 75 households during cooking of a common Kenyan meal. The produced biochar was used in field trials with maize (Zea mays) and kale (Brassica oleracea) comparing biochar to normal farming practices, at biochar doses of 1-10 t ha-1. Findings from one of the sites, in Kwale County, show that for cooking a meal, on average 18 % of fuel was saved compared to the three stone open fire. In addition, 200 g biochar were produced which corresponded to 16.5% of the biomass used. Concentrations of CO and PM2.5 were reduced by 57 and 79 %, respectively. Fuel use was dominated by the wood types neem (Azadirachta indica) and casuarina (Casuarina equisetifolia), but a large variety of wood types were used by the households. Yield increases of maize in Kwale correlated positively with biochar dose. For the 20 farmers that finalized the trials in the first season, yields increased from 0.9 Mg ha-1 in the control plot to 4.4 Mg ha-1 in average in the biochar-amended plots. In addition to presentation of data on biochar production, we present data on biochar quality and use from all three sites. Implications and prerequisites for long-term success and upscaling will be discussed. This research contributes to knowledge on adoption of improved cookstoves by investigating how biochar production can be an additional incentive for cookstove uptake. Furthermore, it contributes to the understanding of biochar production potential in African rural areas. This case study shows that biochar systems in rural Africa can contribute to climate change mitigation. Biochar technology can at the same time help to solve the problems with energy and food security that farmers are facing, and thereby contribute to sustainable development

Bacteremia among children admitted to a rural hospital in Kenya.

BACKGROUND: There are few epidemiologic data on invasive bacterial infections among children in sub-Saharan Africa. We studied every acute pediatric admission to a rural district hospital in Kenya to examine the prevalence, incidence, types, and outcome of community-acquired bacteremia. METHODS: Between August 1998 and July 2002, we cultured blood on admission from 19,339 inpatients and calculated the incidence of bacteremia on the basis of the population served by the hospital. RESULTS: Of a total of 1783 infants who were under 60 days old, 228 had bacteremia (12.8 percent), as did 866 of 14,787 children who were 60 or more days of age (5.9 percent). Among infants who were under 60 days old, Escherichia coli and group B streptococci predominated among a broad range of isolates (14 percent and 11 percent, respectively). Among infants who were 60 or more days of age, Streptococcus pneumoniae, nontyphoidal salmonella species, Haemophilus influenzae, and E. coli accounted for more than 70 percent of isolates. The minimal annual incidence of community-acquired bacteremia was estimated at 1457 cases per 100,000 children among infants under a year old, 1080 among children under 2 years, and 505 among children under 5 years. Of all in-hospital deaths, 26 percent were in children with community-acquired bacteremia. Of 308 deaths in children with bacteremia, 103 (33.4 percent) occurred on the day of admission and 217 (70.5 percent) within two days. CONCLUSIONS: Community-acquired bacteremia is a major cause of death among children at a rural sub-Saharan district hospital, a finding that highlights the need for prevention and for overcoming the political and financial barriers to widespread use of existing vaccines for bacterial diseases

A Planetary Health Perspective on Agroforestry in Sub-Saharan Africa

Human activities change the structure and function of the environment with cascading impacts on human health, a concept known as “planetary health.” Agroforestry—the management of trees with crops and livestock—alters microclimates, hydrology, biogeochemistry, and biodiversity. Besides the nutritional benefits of increased fruit consumption, however, the ways agroforestry affects human health are rarely articulated. This review makes that link. We analyze the pathways through which tree-based farm and landscape change affect food and nutrition security, the spread of infectious disease, the prevalence of non-communicable diseases, and human migration in Sub-Saharan Africa. The available evidence suggests that, despite some increased risks of infectious disease, agroforestry is likely to improve a diverse range of pressing health concerns. We therefore examine the factors determining agroforestry use and identify three drivers of social and environmental change that will determine the future uptake of agroforestry in the region. Thirty percent of Sub-Saharan Africa's cropland has at least 10% tree cover. The available evidence indicates that agroforestry drives environmental change, which can improve a diverse range of pressing health concerns such as malnutrition, spread of infectious disease, prevalence of non-communicable disease, and human migration. This, however, does not always apply: transdisciplinary, participatory approaches are needed to dive more deeply into specific land-management systems to identify synergies and tradeoffs among health outcomes

Comprehensive transcriptome of the maize stalk borer, Busseola fusca, from multiple tissue types, developmental stages, and parasitoid wasp exposures

International audienc

Community-level epidemiology of soil-transmitted helminths in the context of school-based deworming: Baseline results of a cluster randomised trial on the coast of Kenya.

TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02397772

Alcohol use and burden for 195 countries and territories, 1990-2016 : a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016

Background Alcohol use is a leading risk factor for death and disability, but its overall association with health remains complex given the possible protective effects of moderate alcohol consumption on some conditions. With our comprehensive approach to health accounting within the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016, we generated improved estimates of alcohol use and alcohol-attributable deaths and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) for 195 locations from 1990 to 2016, for both sexes and for 5-year age groups between the ages of 15 years and 95 years and older. Methods Using 694 data sources of individual and population-level alcohol consumption, along with 592 prospective and retrospective studies on the risk of alcohol use, we produced estimates of the prevalence of current drinking, abstention, the distribution of alcohol consumption among current drinkers in standard drinks daily (defined as 10 g of pure ethyl alcohol), and alcohol-attributable deaths and DALYs. We made several methodological improvements compared with previous estimates: first, we adjusted alcohol sales estimates to take into account tourist and unrecorded consumption; second, we did a new meta-analysis of relative risks for 23 health outcomes associated with alcohol use; and third, we developed a new method to quantify the level of alcohol consumption that minimises the overall risk to individual health. Findings Globally, alcohol use was the seventh leading risk factor for both deaths and DALYs in 2016, accounting for 2.2% (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 1.5-3.0) of age-standardised female deaths and 6.8% (5.8-8.0) of age-standardised male deaths. Among the population aged 15-49 years, alcohol use was the leading risk factor globally in 2016, with 3.8% (95% UI 3.2-4-3) of female deaths and 12.2% (10.8-13-6) of male deaths attributable to alcohol use. For the population aged 15-49 years, female attributable DALYs were 2.3% (95% UI 2.0-2.6) and male attributable DALYs were 8.9% (7.8-9.9). The three leading causes of attributable deaths in this age group were tuberculosis (1.4% [95% UI 1. 0-1. 7] of total deaths), road injuries (1.2% [0.7-1.9]), and self-harm (1.1% [0.6-1.5]). For populations aged 50 years and older, cancers accounted for a large proportion of total alcohol-attributable deaths in 2016, constituting 27.1% (95% UI 21.2-33.3) of total alcohol-attributable female deaths and 18.9% (15.3-22.6) of male deaths. The level of alcohol consumption that minimised harm across health outcomes was zero (95% UI 0.0-0.8) standard drinks per week. Interpretation Alcohol use is a leading risk factor for global disease burden and causes substantial health loss. We found that the risk of all-cause mortality, and of cancers specifically, rises with increasing levels of consumption, and the level of consumption that minimises health loss is zero. These results suggest that alcohol control policies might need to be revised worldwide, refocusing on efforts to lower overall population-level consumption.Peer reviewe