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Hillary Clinton cooks up plan for clean stoves
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced a plan Tuesday to install 100 million clean-burning stoves in kitchens around the world, helping to save women from ill health.
In a speech to an annual forum run by her husband, former president Bill Clinton, in New York, the US foreign policy chief said that three billion people around the world were gathering around open fires and inefficient, poorly ventilated stoves.
"The food they prepare is different on every continent, but the air they breathe is shockingly similar: a toxic mix of chemicals released by burning wood or other solid fuel," Clinton said.
"As the women cook, smoke fills their lungs, and the toxins begin poisoning them and their children."
She told the Clinton Global Initiative forum that the public-private clean stoves plan, dubbed "Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves," would seek to install the new, 25-dollar units by 2020.
The World Health Organization considers dirty cooking smoke to be one of the five biggest dangers to health in developing countries, killing nearly two million people a year -- twice the number dying from malaria.
"The results of daily exposure can be devastating: pneumonia -- the number one killer of children worldwide -- chronic respiratory diseases, lung cancer and a range of other heath problems," Clinton said.
