Department of Geography & Environmental Management. - Scholarly Publications

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Browsing Department of Geography & Environmental Management. - Scholarly Publications by Subject "Diseases"

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    Childhood Diseases Mapping In Northern Nigeria
    (Uniabuja Press, 2022) Mundi, R.; Panse, D.S.; Ishaya,S.; Nwankwo, B.B.; Adenyuma, M.
    Infectious diseases have been the major causes of death in children and adults - killing them before they had a chance to die of something else. The major diseases of children in Nigeria and other part of Africa are malaria, diarrhoea, respiratory diseases, particularly pneumonia, and Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) (United Nations Children Fund, 2000). Other diseases include chickenpox, diphtheria, influenza, measles, meningitis, polio, whooping cough among others. Most of these diseases are preventable, for example, malaria, pneumonia, diarrhoea, Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and tuberculosis. Unfortunately, they are still killing children in large numbers. Pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria were responsible for approximately 29 per cent of global deaths among children under the age of 5 in 2018 (https://www.unicef.org/health/childhood-diseases). Except for some descriptive reports by National Statistics Offices of most countries; few systematic studies of factors that influence the prevalence of these diseases among young children in these countries were carried out (www.bioline.org.br/request). Data from the Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (2013), indicates that under-five mortality rates are higher in Northern than Southern Nigeria. The North-West records the highest rate of 185 deaths per 1000 live births, followed by the North-East and the North-Central with 160 deaths and 100 deaths per 1000 live births in that order, while the South-East, South-South and South-West record 131, 091 and 90 deaths per 1000 live births respectively (NPC and ICF International, 2014). The report further shows that mortality rates are influenced by socioeconomic, environmental and cultural factors. This study has a dual purpose; First it identifies significant childhood diseases and describes the demographic, socio-cultural, economic and environmental factors responsible for the childhood diseases and mortality from the perspectives of health personnel, mothers and caregivers, and second, we produced maps showing the spatial distribution of health facilities in Northern Nigeria. In line with this goal, the report describes the commonly reported childhood diseases and the demographic, socio-cultural, and economic characteristics of the study population. It explores differences in the characteristics of the target population in relation to the prevalence of childhood morbidity and mortality in the region using tables and maps. The mapping of variation in risk of child morbidity can help improve the targeting of scarce resources for public health interventions. Bearing in mind that direct mapping of relevant environmental risk factors (which may vary considerably in both space and time) is difficult, we relied on investigations of environmental proxies.