Assessment of Housing Conditions and Occurrence of Arthritis Among Residents in Owerri West Local Government Area, Imo State

Public Health

Housing is defined as the process of providing a large number of residential buildings on a permanent basis with adequate physical infrastructure and social amenities (services) in planned, decent, safe and sanitary neighborhoods to meet the basic and special needs of the population. Poor housing conditions is one of the major public health challenges facing most rural and urban communities in Nigeria. One of the significant objectives of designing building to ensure the internal comfort of occupants is that most people generally spend 85 – 90% of their time indoors and thus providing a comfortable and healthy environment is imperative. The aim of this study is to assess the housing conditions and occurrence of arthritis among residents in Owerri West Local Government Area, Imo State, Nigeria. A cross – sectional descriptive study design was built for the study, where 400 residents in Owerri West Local Government Area, Imo State Nigeria were recruited through a multi-stage sampling method. The people were first stratified according to their house locations or clans, that is, the three clans which are Ara, Ochie and Umunwoha in the ratio of 2:3:1 respectively. This is with respect to their population size. The second stage involved randomly selecting autonomous communities in each of the clans and then locating the buildings and the occupants in their communities according to their places of residence using Proportional Sampling method to get the exact number of people to be selected from each clan. Systematic Sampling was used to select the occupants in each house of residence for the study communities and balloting was applied to determine the direction of villages in the chosen communities to start. 133, 200 and 67 occupants in Ara, Ochie and Umunwoha Clans respectively were interviewed using a well-structured questionnaire that was validated and its reliability tested. The relative humidity and temperature of the houses in the studied areas were also measured using Humidity meter (Hygrometer). The result depicted that 240 (60%) of the Housing patterns in the studied area were single rooms, 100 (25%) were flats, 40 (10%) were bungalow and 20 (5%) duplex. In terms of compliance with the National Building Code (Building Bye-Laws), 120 respondents (30%) said that their building plans were approved by Owerri Capital Development Authority (OCDA) while 280 respondents (70%) said that their building plans were not approved by Owerri Capital Development Authority (OCDA). 181 respondents (45.3%) said that they are aware that the conditions of their houses can affect their health while 219 respondents (54.7%) said that they are not aware that the conditions of their houses can affect their health. 20 respondents (16.6%) had severe pains due to arthritis and the study showed that therespondents in single rooms located in damped/humid areas had reports of severe pain due to arthritis. Association between type of housing condition/pattern of the participants and awareness that the condition can affect health were statistically significant (p<0.001, x2 =192.383, df =3). High level of awareness that the condition of house can affect participants’ health was obtained in respondents living in duplex (18, 90%), flat (86, 86%) and bungalow (36, 90%).The awareness was very low among the single room residents (41, 17.1%). The findings showed that higher percentage of the housing conditions are built with lower quality materials and the buildings lacks proper drainage systems causing flooding in most areas that makes the houses humid/ damp especially during rainy season. This could have possible health effect (arthritis) on the people in the studied area. Therefore, every house should be built in compliance with the National Building Code. Every house should provide good physical and environmental conditions to prevent health problem (Arthritis). The Government and Non-governmental Organizations related to housing should sensitize the people on the need to build residential buildings on a permanent basis with adequate physical infrastructure and social amenities in planned, decent, safe and sanitary manner.

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