Child health in urban areas

While the Cameroon’s population is doubling, the urban population is tripling. Within the next few years, more than 70 % of the population will be living in urban areas in Cameroon. Urban populations interact with their environment. Urban people change their environment through their consumption of food, energy, water, and land. And in turn, the polluted urban environment affects the health and quality of life of the urban population. The urban environment is an important factor in determining the quality of life in urban areas and the impact of the urban area on the broader environment. Some urban environmental problems include inadequate water and sanitation, lack of rubbish disposal, and industrial pollution. The health implications of these environmental problems include respiratory infections and other infectious and parasitic diseases. Unfortunately, reducing the problems and ameliorating their effects on the urban population are expensive.
What kind of measure and their availability Cameroon Government is putting together to tackle theses problems in final to improve the lives of the urban people in line with the objectives of the Millennium Development goals.

Health is a major urban policy issue in Nigeria because poverty and slum conditions pose a serious public health threat to the country's rapidly expanding urban population. In vast areas of the cities inadequate housing, sanitation and waste management, and the poor state of public health infrastructure have led to the spread of water-borne and other communicable disease. The Millennium Development Goals in health, environmental sustainability, poverty reduction and international development assistance are unlikely to be met.The level of preventable child and maternal deaths, HIV, etc is still high; and the pattern of government spending on the health sector remains equitable. The paper considers ways to reduce poverty, slum conditions and worsening disparities in access to health care. The central argument is that human development and welfare ought to be at the center of the concern for sustainable urbanization in Africa. We need to review discriminatory laws and practices which inhibit the access of the poor to affordable land, housing and other opportunities.. State and local authorities, the international development community, the private sector and civil society organizations should collaborate to promote well targeted health and other intervention for safer, healthier and more inclusive cities.

It is relatively well-known that discriminatory experiences affect psychological well-being of individuals, but little is known if and how perception of social inequality is associated with individual happiness and life satisfaction. Are people who think that their society is unfair likely to have lower levels of happiness and life satisfaction? If so, is there mediating or moderating effects of individual socio-economic status on the relationship between perceived social inequality and happiness and life satisfaction? This study addresses these questions by analyzing the 2009 Korean General Social Survey (KGSS). Ordered logistic regression analyses show that perceived social inequality decreases individual happiness and life satisfaction. Also, it is detected that its effect is not differential but universal across different socio-economic status groups. This finding implies that social justice as well as individual social economic standing is important for happiness of people in a society.

Using data from the Birth to Twenty (Bt20) 1990 Johannesburg-Soweto born cohort, this paper aims to advance the understanding of links between the experiences of early life-course socio-demographic transitions and their association with body mass index (BMI) in a rapidly transitioning urban environment. A variety of regression modelling techniques are used to examine associations between early life-course socio-economic status (SES) transitions between birth and late adolescence and demographic change (move of address, or primary caregiver marital status change) with changes in BMI and/or obesity risk. Initial results show that for females, a strong positive association between residential mobility and BMI is observed for those also experiencing increased household SES between birth and 12/13 years, while no effect is observed for males. This was shown against a context of a tripling of the female overweight prevalence between late childhood and age 15 years. Further analyses will explore at what age between birth and late adolescence changes in the socio-demographic environment associate most with BMI change. Current findings suggest that targeting those on an upwardly mobile SES trajectory within changing urban environments undergoing nutrition transition with interventions to prevent obesity could have positive benefits.

One the very first concerns social scientist had about population and development is perhaps the conditions workers had to endure in order to make the economic system develop. In that regard, the work of Engels “the condition of the working class in England in 1844” focused on arguing that deprived labour implied poor health. In addition, the works of Charles Booth and Sebohm Rowntree also showed that labour and access to health are important factors of poverty. This research aims at contributing to the general hypothesis that conditions of labour determine health status and that in turn these two factors shape poverty in urban areas. In order to achieve this goal, we make use of fifty two quarters of the Urban Employment National Survey, each containing about 300 thousand observations. In addition, information of causes of death from administrative records is added. With these two main sources of data we construct a panel for econometric testing. Making use of a number of definitions that capture a broader range of working conditions, where formal-informal job is the main axis of analysis we expect to find correlation between more informal precarious activities and more stress related illnesses or causes of death.

Objective: In bigger cities, slum dwelling women are reported to be unprivileged in terms of seeking health care services. An attempt is made to understand the patterns and levels of maternal morbidity and health care utilization. Also, to study the impact of socio-economic background on utilization which augments maternal morbidity.

Design and methodology: Data from a sample of 9003 women from top ten cities is selected. The national level Reproductive and Child Health Survey was conducted during 2007-08. Apart from primary level analyses, odds ratios of the effects of socio-economic factors on maternal morbidity are examined.

Setting: These cities are highly populated and a majority of them are the capitals of the states which that attract wide streams of migrants across the country. These mega cities are hierarchically ranked by Census of India, 2011.

Results: The women reported multiple complications during pregnancy, particularly during and post delivery. But, merely 22 percent have sought ante-natal and post natal care services.

Conclusions: Despite visible gaps in maternal morbidity and utilization to health care services, progressive efforts have been made in improving maternal health. The services are needed to viable, accessible and extensively spread in order to increase utilization.

A Mankhurd study conducted among 229 slum households of Mumbai indicated that average age of slum dwellers was 26 years. One third was illiterate; fifty two percent had age at marriage 15-19 years and average household size 5.4 persons. Fifty percent men were daily wage workers while women were housemaids. Due to scanty water supply a 20 litre vessel cost them Rs. 5. Ladies used public/common toilet while men/ children preferred open air defecation. They maintained connectivity with their kin at native place and sent remittances. The logistic regression indicated that rich went out for entertainment. Women went less for entertainment. They moved to Mumbai with the help of their relatives/friends and found living arrangement better here. Fifty percent fell sick during last six months mostly from viral infection/fever/malaria. Half of them smoked Bidi/cigarettes while three fourth consumed pan/khaini/gutka and one fourth consumed alcohol. They did so by 20 years of age. Older, primary and above educated, scheduled castes/ tribes, non Hindus and rich consumed more alcohols. The logistic regression indicated that slum dwellers having larger family and Muslims suffered more from any illness but the rich suffered less. Wealth quintiles, caste and religion were significant predi

Rivaling drought-hit Ethiopia in its proportion of stunting, India holds 45% of children under 5 as victims of persistent malnutrition. The situation has barely improved over two decades and even worsened among urban poor, whose numbers are exploding and already count 95 billion as per 2011 census. Child malnutrition being a multicausal condition, the present study aims at unveiling a wide range of determinants at individual, mother, and household level. By focusing on children under 3, when effects of malnutrition are still reversible, a sample of 691 children was drawn from the latest Family Health Survey of India (NFHS-3, 2005-2006). Ordered logistic regression was run both on stunting and underweight levels. Child nutritional status appears to be highly dependent upon mother nutritional status and her capacity of breastfeeding. Findings also show that child malnutrition among urban poor emerges early (6-12 months) and keeps worsening with age, indicating insufficient medical supervision. The cruel lack of diversity in the child’s diet is not compensated by access to food assistance or vitamin supplementation, which seem to be mainly out of reach of urban poor. Moreover, poor water and sanitation play a significant role, revealing the necessity to fight the multiple causes of child malnutrition in an integrated manner.

Background: The lifestyle of children is susceptible to rapid changes and these my affect the nutritional status of children.
Objectives: To provide information on Body mass index, nutritional status , dietary and physical activity pattern of 11- 14 years old, preparatory school age children in 4 selected UNISCO affiliated schools in the urban areas of Cairo and Giza Govern orates.
Materials & Methods:This study was a part of Nutrition Education for school age adolescents in associated school UNISCOʼs project network. It was carried out by team of the National Nutrition Institute in the year 2008. Cross-sectional descriptive study, where purposive non–probability sample was selected from four ASPNET Urban schools from four Educational directorates. Total sample was 330 students equally distributed between selected schools, they were 148 male and 183 female and covered the age from 11-14 years. Pre designed questionnaire was used to collect information on gender, date of birth, dietary pattern and physical activity levels. The studied students were subjected to anthropometric and dietary assessments.
Results:Overweight and obese males accounted for 21.0% of the total sample while the percentage is mostly doubled among females to reach 40%.About half of the

As composite of mortality and morbidity, health expectancy has advantage over single indicators when exploring socioeconomic disparities in health. Although huge income gap between urban and rural residents has been reported in China, little research has been done in discussing the urban-rural disparities in health expectancy and the underlying causes. Based on 2006 China Disability Survey, this study used attribution tool to identify the causes of disability by individual diseases and employed Sullivan method to compute life expectancy lived with disability by diseases. Urban male have 4.08 years (female: 4.95 years) lived with disability while rural male have 4.72 years (female: 5.46 years) lived with disability. Leading diseases of presbycusis, cataract, cerebrovascular disease, osteoarthritis and unclassified injury accounted for different years of disability. Different diseases patterns of disability and health expectancy exist among urban and rural areas. Such an identification provides a support to Chinese policy for fighting against disability among elderly.