ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, an attempt was made to identify major neighbourhood problems in Azamgarh city while in this chapter an attempt has been made to understand the impact of neighbourhood environmental problems on human health. Environmental factors, particularly in developing countries, are the basic cause of a considerable burden of death and disease, as estimated 25% of all avoidable illnesses are caused by environmental factors. A substantial proportion of the overall disease burden in developing countries can be accredited to relatively smaller key areas of the risk. These are unavailability of good quality water, sanitation, poor outdoor and indoor air quality and global environmental changes. This chapter has been divided into three sections. In the first section, most frequent diseases in the city that have occurred during the last two years have been identified and analysed thoroughly. In the second section, an attempt has been made to identify risk factors in the neighbourhood environment and to understand their association with the prevalent diseases. In the third section, hypotheses of the study are tested using Karl Pearson’s coefficient of correlation. Most common (diagnosed) diseases that were reported by residents in the decreasing order are, cold and flu, malaria, diarrhoea, cholera, skin infections, jaundice dengue, typhoid, chicken pox, measles, tuberculosis and asthma. Other health problems (symptomatic) reported by residents of Azamgarh city were stress, sleep disturbances, annoyance, headache, shortness of breath, coughing and wheezing, and deafness. It was found that diseases show an increasing trend moving from high-income to low-income neighbourhoods depicting that people living in low-income neighbourhoods were the major sufferers of these diseases. Major risk factors identified in the neighbourhood environment were overcrowding, irregular water supply, water quality problem, open drains, improper cleaning of drains, water logging, improper collection of solid waste, overcrowding, neighbourhood disorder, air pollution and noise pollution. Karl Pearson’s coefficient of correlation and scatter plots have been used to study the association between these risk factors and prevalent diseases. It has been found that risk factors related to water and sanitation i.e. irregular water supply, water quality problem, open drains, improper cleaning of drains, waste accumulation, inadequate waste collection and water logging were associated with diseases like typhoid, cholera, jaundice, diarrhoea and skin infections, overcrowding was associated with measles and chickenpox. Hypothesis testing has been performed by using Karl Pearson’s coefficient of correlation. It was found that null hypothesis of the study i.e. “There is insignificant effect of neighbourhood environment on resident’s health” is failed to accept as suggested by “r” and “p” values of correlation.
