Fw: [stove] Nepal Appeal Addendum
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Dan Campbell
Sep 14, 2015, 10:10:15 AM9/14/15
to indoor-air-pol...@googlegroups.com
From: Kirk R. Smith <krks...@berkeley.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2015 9:52 AM
To: Kirk R.Smith
Subject: [stove] Nepal Appeal Addendum
Sent: Monday, September 14, 2015 9:52 AM
To: Kirk R.Smith
Subject: [stove] Nepal Appeal Addendum
Just note to say that we are still trying different donation services for the website and please do not be put off if the website asks for a small donation to support the collection of the funds. You need not feel obliged to add any anything additional
to your contribution./k
p.s. My wife and I have started off the campaign with a US$5000 donation.
--------------------------------
An appeal to air pollution colleagues around the world to help us bring healthier household environments to Nepali earthquake victims.
From: Sharat Verma, MPH, MD (PI, PEER Health Study); Dhiraj Pokhrel (Leaders Nepal); Amod Pokhrel, MS, PhD; and Kirk R. Smith, MPH, PhD
As many of you know, we have been helping Nepali colleagues with a cohort study (PEER Health Study) comparing child pneumonia rates in village households with biogas cooking and those using open wood-fired cookstoves. This study is in Kavre district, about 90 minutes east of Kathmandu, which was heavily affected in the recent earthquakes, which killed nearly 9 thousand people in Nepal. Among our 550 study households, damage assessment showed that 394 houses suffered minor or major cracks and 156 houses were completely destroyed. Three study infants and three mothers were killed. The earthquake also completely destroyed 20 biogas plants, and partially damaged 180. Eighty of the damaged biogas plants have been fixed, but due to lack of resources, 100 households have not been able to repair their biogas systems. {the destroyed and damaged houses themselves are being rebuilt fairly steadily now with government and other aid)
Although suspended for several months, field work in our PEER study has now resumed. Weekly morbidity assessment and regular air pollution monitoring of 547 children are ongoing. Unfortunately, however, about 120 households with completely or partially damaged biogas plants have reverted to using the open wood-fired cookstove, called the Chulo. From our air pollution measurements, this means that the PM2.5 exposures of the young children in those households have more than doubled due to the earthquakes, since biogas is a quite clean cooking fuel that is well-liked and used faithfully in these villages.
Recognizing that we have a responsibility to assist the households in our study who have suffered due to the disaster, we are planning to help rebuild 20, and fix 100 partially damaged, biogas plants, bringing those households back to the lower pollution exposures they had previously enjoyed, or even lower. In addition, as the study winds down, we have committed to install new biogas plants in the 100 Chulo-using households (the "control "group in our study, although this is an observational study not an RCT), who have enough cattle to operate small biogas systems but not enough money to install the system by themselves. Finally, for the remaining 166 Chulo-using households, who do not have the two cattle needed to operate a biogas plant, we have committed to installing the best available clean and efficient biomass cookstoves. [we are also plan to install the best available 4 m3 biogas systems that provide effective sanitation as well as clean cooking fuel and are better sized to provide enough gas so that the traditional open stove does not have to be used often -- an upgrade for many households]
The funder of the research project does not wish to assist in this humanitarian effort and thus we cannot use grant funding, but is allowing the project to adjust its monitoring objectives to measure the air pollution and, potentially, reveal some health implications of the changes in household cooking systems as they occur as well as from the earthquake stress as well. Thus, there will be, we plan, a scientific output from the relief effort.
The Kavre BEAR Project will take advantage both of contributions from the Nepalese government programs for biogas plants and stoves and contributions in labor and materials from the households themselves. Thus, the funds we hope to raise will be highly leveraged and will not go to gadgets that are not already an integral part of community development in Nepal.
We will be posting a description of the relief plans on the website bellow as they proceed, but here we want to emphasize that the field effort will be undertaken by Leaders Nepal, an established, well regarded, experienced, and competent NGO. Being the implementing organization for the PEER study fieldwork, they are well placed to take this on and have the needed connections both with the local communities and the Nepalese government.
Dr. Amod Pokhrel here in Berkeley will manage the international aspects of the Kavre BEAR project including being responsible for raising and dispersing the funds and maintaining the accounts. We hope to keep the administrative costs as low as possible with at least 80% of raised funds being spent in the villages, but in an ad-hoc effort like this, there will be need for some funds for management, logistics, facilitation, and monitoring.
We are thus appealing to the international HAP community to support the BEAR Project to help these 547 households acquire clean household environments and efficient renewable energy systems in the aftermath of this natural disaster. We believe that US$120,000 will enable us to complete the tasks outlined.
To assist contributors from the USA, we are utilizing a "fiscal" sponsor, the Bay Area Nepali Women Organization, a registered 501-3c organization, so that donations can be tax deductible under US law. Contributors from other countries can use the same website.
We hope you will consider this a worthy cause and donate by credit card, Paypal, direct bank deposit, or by sending checks to the address shown: http://www.bayareanepaliwomen.org/. There will also be a link on Kirk's website below.
We welcome comments, questions, and suggestions.
---------------------------
Kirk R. Smith, MPH, PhD
Professor of Global Environmental Health
Director of the Global Health and Environment Program
School of Public Health
747 University Hall
University of California
Berkeley, California, 94720-7360
phone 1-510-643-0793; fax 642-5815
krks...@berkeley.edu
http://www.kirkrsmith.org/
p.s. My wife and I have started off the campaign with a US$5000 donation.
--------------------------------
An appeal to air pollution colleagues around the world to help us bring healthier household environments to Nepali earthquake victims.
From: Sharat Verma, MPH, MD (PI, PEER Health Study); Dhiraj Pokhrel (Leaders Nepal); Amod Pokhrel, MS, PhD; and Kirk R. Smith, MPH, PhD
Kavre BEAR (Biogas Earthquake Assistance and Recovery) Project
http://www.bayareanepaliwomen.org/.As many of you know, we have been helping Nepali colleagues with a cohort study (PEER Health Study) comparing child pneumonia rates in village households with biogas cooking and those using open wood-fired cookstoves. This study is in Kavre district, about 90 minutes east of Kathmandu, which was heavily affected in the recent earthquakes, which killed nearly 9 thousand people in Nepal. Among our 550 study households, damage assessment showed that 394 houses suffered minor or major cracks and 156 houses were completely destroyed. Three study infants and three mothers were killed. The earthquake also completely destroyed 20 biogas plants, and partially damaged 180. Eighty of the damaged biogas plants have been fixed, but due to lack of resources, 100 households have not been able to repair their biogas systems. {the destroyed and damaged houses themselves are being rebuilt fairly steadily now with government and other aid)
Although suspended for several months, field work in our PEER study has now resumed. Weekly morbidity assessment and regular air pollution monitoring of 547 children are ongoing. Unfortunately, however, about 120 households with completely or partially damaged biogas plants have reverted to using the open wood-fired cookstove, called the Chulo. From our air pollution measurements, this means that the PM2.5 exposures of the young children in those households have more than doubled due to the earthquakes, since biogas is a quite clean cooking fuel that is well-liked and used faithfully in these villages.
Recognizing that we have a responsibility to assist the households in our study who have suffered due to the disaster, we are planning to help rebuild 20, and fix 100 partially damaged, biogas plants, bringing those households back to the lower pollution exposures they had previously enjoyed, or even lower. In addition, as the study winds down, we have committed to install new biogas plants in the 100 Chulo-using households (the "control "group in our study, although this is an observational study not an RCT), who have enough cattle to operate small biogas systems but not enough money to install the system by themselves. Finally, for the remaining 166 Chulo-using households, who do not have the two cattle needed to operate a biogas plant, we have committed to installing the best available clean and efficient biomass cookstoves. [we are also plan to install the best available 4 m3 biogas systems that provide effective sanitation as well as clean cooking fuel and are better sized to provide enough gas so that the traditional open stove does not have to be used often -- an upgrade for many households]
The funder of the research project does not wish to assist in this humanitarian effort and thus we cannot use grant funding, but is allowing the project to adjust its monitoring objectives to measure the air pollution and, potentially, reveal some health implications of the changes in household cooking systems as they occur as well as from the earthquake stress as well. Thus, there will be, we plan, a scientific output from the relief effort.
The Kavre BEAR Project will take advantage both of contributions from the Nepalese government programs for biogas plants and stoves and contributions in labor and materials from the households themselves. Thus, the funds we hope to raise will be highly leveraged and will not go to gadgets that are not already an integral part of community development in Nepal.
We will be posting a description of the relief plans on the website bellow as they proceed, but here we want to emphasize that the field effort will be undertaken by Leaders Nepal, an established, well regarded, experienced, and competent NGO. Being the implementing organization for the PEER study fieldwork, they are well placed to take this on and have the needed connections both with the local communities and the Nepalese government.
Dr. Amod Pokhrel here in Berkeley will manage the international aspects of the Kavre BEAR project including being responsible for raising and dispersing the funds and maintaining the accounts. We hope to keep the administrative costs as low as possible with at least 80% of raised funds being spent in the villages, but in an ad-hoc effort like this, there will be need for some funds for management, logistics, facilitation, and monitoring.
We are thus appealing to the international HAP community to support the BEAR Project to help these 547 households acquire clean household environments and efficient renewable energy systems in the aftermath of this natural disaster. We believe that US$120,000 will enable us to complete the tasks outlined.
To assist contributors from the USA, we are utilizing a "fiscal" sponsor, the Bay Area Nepali Women Organization, a registered 501-3c organization, so that donations can be tax deductible under US law. Contributors from other countries can use the same website.
We hope you will consider this a worthy cause and donate by credit card, Paypal, direct bank deposit, or by sending checks to the address shown: http://www.bayareanepaliwomen.org/. There will also be a link on Kirk's website below.
We welcome comments, questions, and suggestions.
---------------------------
Kirk R. Smith, MPH, PhD
Professor of Global Environmental Health
Director of the Global Health and Environment Program
School of Public Health
747 University Hall
University of California
Berkeley, California, 94720-7360
phone 1-510-643-0793; fax 642-5815
krks...@berkeley.edu
http://www.kirkrsmith.org/
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