Background
malaria, malaria infection, parasitaemia
MALARIA, DISEASE, MALARIA
Malaria remains a disease of public health importance and poses a significant burden on people living in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), the region with the heaviest malaria burden. Although malaria infection is widespread among people living in malaria endemic areas, pregnant women and children under 5 years are most affected [In Ghana, malaria remains burdensome particularly among pregnant women and children. The prevalence of malaria parasitaemia is about 20% among pregnant women at the national scale [It has been suggested previously that smoke from household biomass fuel use reduces malaria risk through a reduction in human biting by the malaria vector, female Leveraging on the Ghana Randomized Air Pollution and Health Study (GRAPHS), this study investigated the hypothesis that, interventions to reduce household biomass smoke may have an unintended consequence of increasing placental malaria or increasing malaria in the first year of life. This provides the first evidence from a randomized controlled trial regarding a possible relationship between biomass smoke and malaria risk.