Knowledge, attitudes and practices on indoor air pollution among residents of Mbalala Town, Mukono District

Abstract

In several developing countries including Uganda, many people still rely on solid fuels (for example, charcoal, firewood, and paraffin stoves) for cooking due to their relatively lower cost. Most cooking is done indoors which puts several lives at risk because continuous exposure to indoor air pollution is known to lead to both acute and chronic illnesses. To a greater extent, children under five years and women are the most affected individuals since they spend more time near cooking places. Therefore, understanding people’s knowledge, attitudes and practices towards indoor air pollution is very important in designing effective interventions to achieve sustainable behavioural change and limit exposure among communities. To assess knowledge, attitudes and practices on indoor air pollution among residents of Mbalala town, Mukono district so as to get information that can be used design interventions to control this public health challenge. A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted using both quantitative and qualitative data collection methods. The quantitative data was collected amongst 385 participants using a standard semi-structured questionnaire entered in a mobile Kobo collect tool. The participants were selected using a mixture of simple random sampling method and systematic random sampling to eliminate biases. Qualitative data was collected from 10 key informants (basing on level of data saturation) using a key informant interview guide. Quantitative data was downloaded into an excel sheet for cleaning and exported to StataMP 14 (64-bit) for univariate analysis, while qualitative data was analyzed manually using thematic analysis. The majority of participants 255/385 (66.2%) who took part in the study were females, with a mean age of 32.5 years. Most of the participants 207/385 (53.8%) were married, but very few 49/385 (12.7%) had attained higher education. The largest percentage 74% (285/385) of the participants were low-income earners (earned UGX Shs. 400, 000 or less per month). A significant number of participants who had heard about indoor air pollution 334/348 (96.0%) had good knowledge on indoor air pollution. The highest percentage of participants 58.0% (130/224) had good attitudes towards indoor air pollution, followed by 28.6% (64/224) with fair attitudes, and 13.4% (30/224) with poor attitudes. Over half of the participants 201/373 (53.9%) who were involved in cooking cooked indoors. These participants also reportedly spent averagely 4 hours indoors in a day, and most of this time (2.4 hours) was spent cooking. However, the majority of participants 98.0% (197/201) had remedies to indoor air pollution which mainly included: 182/201 (90.5%) opened windows and doors while cooking; 36/201 (17.9%) put holes in walls; and 25/201 (12.4%) took charcoal stoves into houses when they were well lit. A large number of participants 148/385 (38.4%) still used candles, and 16/385 (4.2%) kerosene and paraffin lamps for lighting.