Eastern African Geohealth Hub: Overall Status and Research Findings from Ethiopia and Uganda

摘要

The GEOHealth Hub for Eastern Africa is tackling growing challenges from environmental and occupational health hazards through research on air pollution in Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya. In each country, Children's Health Studies (CHS), modeled after the Southern California Children's Health Study, and daily mortality/morbidity time series studies are being conducted. These activities are co-ordinated with training workshops around health/exposure assessment and data analysis and also mentored training to cohorts of African scientists. We present findings from the just completed CHS in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and initial findings from the ongoing CHS in Kampala, Uganda. Both studies followed a multi-level design based on school-children from ten sub-cities, representing a diverse pollution profile due to variations in levels of traffic-related, industrial and indoor pollution sources. In Ethiopia, lung function tests (LFT)were performed at schools on 1086 children, 88.5% of whom had completed the LFT, out of which 89.4% had acceptable performance. About 97% of the tested children had FEV1/FVC >70%, 88% > 80%. Based on questionnaires (n=969), mean age was 10 years (SD=1.0; Range=9-13) with 55% females; majority of mothers have no education (80%), while 54% and 80% of mothers and fathers, respectively, were employed. The proportions of reported respiratory illness were generally low and varied by typology. Charcoal and electricity are the most common types of fuel for all meals while Injera baking mainly involved electricity and wood. Most households (78%) used charcoal for traditional coffee ceremony. The child was present at 61-91% of homes during cooking. PM2.5 levels were measured at study schools using E-samplers and showed wide spatial variations. Household air pollution levels are measured using fixed and personal monitors at strategically selected sites of 30% of homes to enable spatio-temporal modeling for estimation of exposure for all study homes.