For example, babies and children under five years old damage their lungs and have a higher rate of asthma, breathing in smoke from the stoves that are not well ventilated. Of those children under 5 years of age who come to our clinic for treatment, 28% of them are treated for asthma.
6% of all our other patients are treated for asthma or other pulmonary problems. We have older women with emphysema and with chronic pulmonary obstruction who have never smoked a cigarette in their lives…but have stood over wood burning cook stoves breathing wood smoke day-in and day-out for their whole lives.
Adding to the smoke, these stoves are dangerous, especially to children. They are not protected very well, and as a result many children are burned and many very seriously. Women get many burns cooking and many have discolorations of the skin from burns.
Sometimes a family, desperate to create a fire to cook their tortillas, rice and - if fortunate - beans, will burn other flammable trash, including plastic which is toxic. Also, the smoke hurts the children’s and women’s eyes.
Our health clinic has rescue inhalers and maintenance inhalers* to help relieve and control asthma. We have nebulizers** in 27 homes scattered around the barrios and rural communities so that people can go and receive nebulizing treatments there, as well as in our clinic.
Taking a deep breath of clean air is a gift to someone struggling to breathe. As someone who has been hospitalized because I could not get enough air in my lungs, wheezing and gasping for air made me feel like a fish flopping on a dock. It is frightening.
To simply breathe.
-Kathleen
_____________________*Rescue inhalers are fast-acting to relieve the symptoms of asthma. Maintenance inhalers are slower acting and used daily to prevent and control the symptoms of asthma. Inhalers cost $7 each, and prednisone and nebulizing medications cost $10 combined.
**A machine that relieves breathing issues by turning liquid medicine into inhalable mist.
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