KARACHI, Sept 29: Speakers at a seminar on Thursday called for measures leading to clean and affordable household energy in rural areas so that the poor masses could be saved from risks of diseases.

They said in Pakistan more than 80 per cent of households use solid fuel, including biomass fuel like forest and agriculture wood and animal dung, particularly for cooking and heating purposes, which ultimately causes serious health hazards and environmental problems.

The seminar on “Indoor air pollution from household fuels: assessing impact on child health and developing effective interventions” was organized by Aga Khan University in collaboration with the WHO on the campus.

Dr Anita Zaidi of AKU who was also the chief organizer of the seminar made a presentation of a study conducted in collaboration with scientists from Harvard University and University of California, Berkley. She said indoor pollution taking place due to use of biomass in Pakistan was causing an estimated 25,000 infant deaths from pneumonia every year in Pakistan alone.

Besides, she pointed out that womenfolk and children in rural areas spend most of their time in collecting wood and preparing animal dung and hardly get sufficient time for other social activities.

The female children are burdened so much that they have been unable to attend schools and thus fail to improve their personality and behaviour and remain trapped in poverty problems along with their families, she added.

She said that exposure to indoor air pollution in the form of particulate smoke affects population growth by maintaining high level of infant and child mortality.

She said that over 50 per cent of the world’s population still relies upon traditional biomass for energy, while on the other hand excessive smoke overwhelms the respiratory tract clearing mechanism, allowing secretions containing bacteria and viruses to pool in the lower airways.

Dr Nigel Bruce from the University of Liverpool, UK, discussed the disease burden on poor mothers and children exposed to smoke from biomass fuels.

Such an exposure leads to acute respiratory infections, low birth-weight babies, and other chronic illnesses, he said, and added that short studies had shown that indoor air pollution (IAP) could cause lung cancer, TB, cataract and cardiac problems as well.

Abdul Qadir of UNDP said energy could play an important role in poverty reduction. Two billion people have no access to electricty and an additional two billion people have access to unreliable electricity, while two billion people were using traditional fuels for cooking.

Zafar Fatimi of AKU, Rehana Siddiqui of AKU, Dr Martin Weber of WHO also spoke at the seminar. The speakers also discussed low-cost solutions to the problems of indoor air pollution exposure.