Ameliorating Rural Health using Smokeless Chulha

Ms. Apoorva Dhupkar Ujjain Engg College, Ujjain apoorva.dhupkar@gmail.com

Abstract Today, most of our villagers are facing health problems. Due to lack of awareness, they continue living in a polluted environment. The most dangerous killer of children under 5 years is Acute Lower Respiratory Infections (ALRI). ALRI is estimated to claim the lives of 256,000 Indian children each year. About 10 % of rural men, 20 % women and 50% children suffer from respiratory illness each year.

According to the WHO, 36% of all ALRI is attributed to Indoor Air Pollution (IAP). This IAP is basically caused by the use of biomass fuel such as wood, agro-waste, cow-dung, briquettes etc. Indoor Air Pollution in the last decade has proved to be a large health threat in rural areas.

One of the best solutions to this burning problem is the use of smokeless chulhas i.e. cooking stoves with a chimney. These are much more clean & smoke-free means, easy to build- repair & use, drudgery reducing, time-saving, has much higher (almost double than traditional chulha) fuel efficiency & cheaper than any other alternative source like LPG, etc. Moreover it saves our forests upto a certain extent, since the quantity of wood used in smokeless chulhas is less than half of the quantity used in traditional chulhas. Therefore, it has a high potential to bring about relief from the burden of IAP in Rural India.

Keywords Rural Health, Efficiency, advantages, commercialization