ABSTRACT
Employment at the Kaduna Textiles Ltd mill included health care at the mill’s two clinics. Attendance records from 2002 indicate the most common illnesses diagnosed and drugs ordered by the clinic personnel for the treatment of workers. These records coincide with verbal autopsies provided by widows which suggest that cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases were the most frequent reasons for their husbands’ deaths. In addition, a small number of former KTL workers died from road transport accidents although the details of these incidents provided by some widows, which are missing from death certificates and clinic lists. While the difficulties of assessing adult mortality data without standardized and detailed death registration data, widows’ descriptions of their husbands’ deaths, corroborated by death certificates, along with the observations of KTL medical personnel and former KTL workers, offer a sense of the consequences when basic social and economic support is not provided. While moving to a thriving urban center—Kaduna—was initially seen as beneficial by many widows, the closing of the Kaduna Textiles Ltd mill and their subsequent experience of the illnesses and deaths of their husbands have led some to question the benefits of modern, urban living.
