Abstract

The study examines the effects of fuelwood use on health: The Case of Household Infants in Nigeria. Secondary data set from the National Demographic Health Survey (2018) was used, also descriptive statistics, Tobit and Logistic regressions were employed in this study for results analyses. A sample size of 16,685 households with infants, were used for this study out of which 9,695 households cooked in an indoor kitchen location and 6,990 cooked outdoor. The results reveal that 97% of the households has an average of 2 infants, also 90% are headed by the male who has a mean age of 43 years. The economic status indicates that most households are poor with the mean wealth index of ₦-33, 811. The respiratory symptoms recorded were cough with 34%, shortness of breath 33% and blocked nose and chest 32%. The Tobit regression analysis was used to determine the effect of fuelwood on the health of the infants and the results showed that cough was negative and also insignificant while shortness of breath, blocked chest and nose are positive and also significant at 1%, respectively. The logit regression analysis shows that cooking indoor affects the infants, and it also significantly causes both shortness of breath, blocked chest and nose, but this location of cooking is insignificantly related to cough. The study concludes that the majority of the households are poor, have infants, mostly use fuelwood in an indoor kitchen. The significant respiratory symptoms that affect the infants are shortness of breath and blocked nose and chest. Thus, government should look at creating public and media awareness on the health effects of cooking with fuelwood without the installation of smoke extractors in the households and create policies that would make the accessibility to affordable clean cooking energy among households with infants.