Indoor Biomass Fuel as A Higher Risk Factor of Rti and Tb in Hiv Positive Female More Than Male Patients of Western India

Background: It is well known that one third poor population of world use biomass fuel for cooking and heating. It is universally accepted fact that bio-mass fuel plays a significant role as predisposing factor of tuberculosis, acute respiratory tract infections and COPD even in non-immune-suppressed (HIV sero-negative) individuals. As we all know house hold cooking is the primarily performed by women. So close association with bio mass fuel and even longer duration to it make women more vulnerable to this RTI secondary RTI infections. Aim: To study effects of biomass fuel on prevalence of RTI/tuberculosis on HIV-infected patients of Gujarat. Material & Methods:In the present study 961 HIV infected patients with RTI and 300 HIV infected patients without RTI and 300 HIV-uninfected patients with RTI were surveyed for use of bio-mass fuel or clean fuel. Result. Conclusion: It had been surveyed, statistically analysed and had been found even higher risk predisposing factor mainly for tuberculosis and other acute respiratory tract infections in immune-suppressed HIV-sero positive patients. Here biomass fuel had been evaluated as a risk factor in developing TB in HIV patients and incidences of RTI in HIV sero-positive patients had been found in our study that those who were found to have 2.3 times higher risk of contracting respiratory tract infections as compared to those who were not suffering from HIV. Even among all these RTI patients who might acquire secondary RTI infections due to bio mass fuel, 61.87 % were found to be women. When only TB is considered in this study it was found 67.44 % women were observed suffered from TB when compared with same group males. This increased infected woman to TB and COPD in turn results in preterm delivery which leads to birth of low birthweight babies if women are pregnant.