George, C.E. orcid.org/0000-0001-7086-200X, Norman, G., Wadugodapitya, A. et al. (5 more authors) (2019) Health issues in a Bangalore slum: findings from a household survey using a mobile screening toolkit in Devarajeevanahalli. BMC Public Health, 19. 456. ISSN 1471-2458
Abstract
Background: Slums are home to nearly one billion people in the world and are expanding at an exponential rate. Devarjeevanahalli is a large notified slum in Bangalore, South India which is characterised by poverty, overcrowding, hazardous living environment and social complexities. The poor living conditions not only affect the health of the people living there but also poses distinctive challenges to conducting health surveys. The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a household survey that was done to study the health condition of people living in a slum. Methods: A community-based cross-sectional survey was designed to determine the prevalence of health conditions using a mobile screening toolkit-THULSI (Toolkit for Healthy Urban Life in Slums Initiative). Devarjeevanahalli slum was chosen purposively as it is fairly representative of any slum in a big city in India. Sample size was calculated as 1100 households and demographic parameters at the household level and parameters related to priority health conditions (hypertension, diabetes mellitus, anaemia and malnutrition) at the individual level were studied. Six zones within the slum were purposively selected and all the contiguous households were selected. The last of the six zones was partially surveyed as the desired sample size was achieved. Results: A total of 1186 households were surveyed and 3693 people were screened. More than three fourth (70.4%) of the population were below poverty line. Only one third had a regular job and the average daily income was 5.3$ and 2.6$ in men and women respectively. The prevalence of hypertension (35.5%), diabetes (16.6%) and anaemia (70.9%) was high in the screened slum population. Most of the people (56.5% of hypertensives and 34.4% diabetics) were screened for the first time. Almost half of the children under the age of five years were stunted. Conclusions: Poor income security and huge burden of health issues were reported among adults and children in the household health screening in a large notified slum in South India. Most people were unaware of their disease condition prior to the screening. Relatively simple technological solutions enabled the local health team to screen the slum population despite many challenges.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s). 2019 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
Keywords: | Slum; Screening; Health problems; Technology |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health (Sheffield) > School of Health and Related Research (Sheffield) > ScHARR - Sheffield Centre for Health and Related Research |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 15 May 2019 11:44 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 21:49 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | BMC (part of Springer Nature) |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1186/s12889-019-6756-7 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:146070 |