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WHO and UNDP highlight indoor smoke as the killer in the kitchen by Marco Lopatin
The boldly worded statement described ‘how thick acrid smoke rising from stoves and fires inside homes is associated with around 1.6 million deaths per year in developing countries – that’s one life lost every 20 seconds to the killer in the kitchen’. The news was picked up by Reuters and Associated Press and was reproduced around the world. Online newspapers across continents including the Washington Times and the China Daily carried the story alongside the Financial Times. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) reacted to the news by issuing a supporting statement of its own. During the course of the day, the WHO was interviewed by the BBC World Service and United Nations radio. Meanwhile, global news channel BBC World devoted an entire edition of its flagship daily news show, Asia Today, to discuss IAP with the Shell Foundation, an Indian entrepreneur and the UNDP. Image file does not exist - click to upload Commenting on the day’s success Eva Rehfuesse, who led the awareness raising initiative from the WHO’s headquarters in Geneva, said: ‘The combined action by the WHO and UNDP highlighted the magnitude of the indoor smoke problem and the plight of those most affected: rural women and their children. It was a day to demonstrate not just the issue but also the solutions being worked on by readers of Boiling Point all over the world. In a few years’ time, the WHO is planning to present lessons learnt to governments based on innovative local and national projects’. The sentiment was shared by Karen Westley, programme manager of Breathing Space™ at the Shell Foundation – a $10m commitment to scaling up sustainable solutions to IAP in six countries. ‘The October 15th publicity drive is great news for the Partnership for Clean Indoor Air. It’s great to see the partnership’s biggest members front up the issue before a mainstream media audience around the world. We face a tough challenge bringing attention to our cause in some parts of the world but at least now we have some something to build on.’ Cowan Coventry, ITDG’s chief executive, and Kurt Hoffman, director of the Shell Foundation, issued a statement ask whether there is the political will to match the solutions being implemented across the developing world (2) and (3). The case for raising the importance of IAP received a second boost just two weeks later. In late October, the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) released its authoritative World Energy Outlook (2004) which again drew attention to solving IAP. In a chapter entitled Energy and Development, the report pointed out that ‘the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals would most likely require a substantial reduction in the use of traditional biomass for cooking and heating’. The IEA estimated that if poverty alleviation targets were to be met, the use of modern cooking and heating fuels would have to be extended to 700 million more people by 2015.
[top] [end]Further information1. WHO: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/statements/2004/statement5/en/2. Shell Foundation: http://www.shellfoundation.org/latest/151004.html 3. ITDG: http://www.itdg.org/?id=iap_who) 4. CEIHD: http://ceihd.berkeley.edu/ ; [top] [end]Contents: Boiling Point 50 - Scaling up and commercialisation of household energy initiatives
Categories: Boiling Point 50| Scaling Up | ||||||||||||
Page created:
08 September 2008; Last edited:
08 September 2008; Version: 0 | ||||||||||||
Pagename: WHOAndUNDPHighlightIndoorSmokeAsTheKillerInTheKitchen @HEDON: HNNA | ||||||||||||
