Many epidemiological studies investigate whether an association exists between a binary risk factor X and a binary response variable Y. They analyse whether an observed association between X and Y persists when the level of another factor Z that might influence the association is controlled. This involves testing conditional independence of X and Y controlling for Z. The Mantel-Haenszel test is most widely used to test conditional independence for sparse tables. But if the association between X and Y varies along the levels of Z, Mantel-Haenszel test has a low power problem. In this study, we propose an alternative test procedure which overcomes the low power problem in that case. We find out the null distribution of the alternative test statistic and compare its performance with the Mantel-Haenszel test by simulation.