As the Cooking and Pneumonia Study (CAPS) continues to reach significant milestones in terms of recruitment, the team have released a video filmed in Malawi explaining the main aims of the study and highlighting the potential importance of clean cookstoves in relation to preventing pneumonia in children under the age of five. It is now the largest trial of the effects of an advanced cookstove intervention on health outcomes conducted anywhere in the world, and, as recruitment continues, the team in Malawi continue to collect data from the children enrolled using personal carbon monoxide monitors.
The video outlines, created by Handstand Productions, the two-year study that will track around 10,000 children aged under five years who live in randomised villages in Chikhwawa and Chilumba in Malawi. The homes of the children involved in the study are randomly selected to be supplied with two clean cookstoves or to continue cooking on open fires in the traditional way. The aim is to see if the new stoves, which can reduce emissions by up to 90%, will stop the children getting pneumonia, a major cause of death in this age group.
Thousands of cookstoves have been delivered so far, and the reaction among the participants appears to be very positive, with one mother on the video talking about the benefits of the cookstoves including its speed in cooking and the fact that it uses a fraction of the fuel needed for the traditional open fires.
The filming was facilitated by the Medical Research Council (MRC) partnership grant BREATHE Africa. The CAPS study is funded by a £2.7 million grant from the Joint Global Health Trials Scheme, a partnership of the UK Department for International Development (DfID), the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Wellcome Trust. It is being implemented in Malawi through collaborative partnerships between the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, The Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme, The Malawi College of Medicine and the Malawi Epidemiology and Intervention Research Unit.
For more information, go to the CAPS website.