Urbanization, emerging slums and increasing health problems: a challenge before the nation: an empirical study with reference to state of uttar pradesh in India

Urbanization in developing world is unprecedented, and in coming few years the number of urban dwellers is expected to exceed rural dwellers. In India, due to unprecedented and unplanned urbanization the slum areas in urban society are rapidly increasing posing serious threat to sustainable development of the country. The objective of the present study is to map out major slum areas of an urban centre, the environmental conditions in and around of those slum areas and the impact of environmental condition on health profile of the dwellers. The analysis is based on primary data collected at two points of time i.e. November-December 2001; May-June 2009 with the help of a questionnaire through a comprehensive survey of ten major slum areas of Aligarh city, India. The analysis reveals that these areas are characterized by complete absence of basic amenities and facilities like drinking water, toilets and bathroom, drainage system and garbage disposal facilities, and no improvement has been observed over the period of seven years. Various infectious non-communicable and communicable diseases especially respiratory infections (60.22%), tuberculosis (31.26%) and diarhoea/dysentery (54.23%) were observed to be very common health problems that showed positive relationship with the use of traditional fuels (p<0.01), poor personal hygiene (p<0.01) and contaminated drinking water (p<0.01) respectively. The paper concludes with policy-oriented discussion of the relationship between urbanization, increasing number of slums and health challenges before the developing nations.