By Kofi Ahovi Millions of women, in developing countries, breathe in harmful smoke daily while cooking their families’ meals and walking far distances to secure fuel in order to cook those meals. Exposure to smoke from traditional cookstoves and open fires, the primary means of cooking for nearly three billion people in the developing world, causes nearly four million premature deaths each year, including 18,000 annual deaths in Ghana, and millions more suffer from cancer, pneumonia, heart and lung disease, blindness, and burns. More than 70 percent of Ghana’s population relies on solid fuels for their household cooking needs. Reliance on biomass increases pressure on local natural resources, leading to environmental degradation, and forces women and children to spend many hours each week collecting wood. Inefficient cooking also contributes to climate change through emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, and aerosols such as black carbon. Exposure to sm