BACKGROUND Tobacco smoking (TS) and illicit drug use (IDU) are of public health concerns especially in developing countries, including Bangladesh. This paper aims to (i) identify the determinants of TS and IDU, and (ii) examine the association of TS with IDU among young slum dwellers in Bangladesh. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Data on a total of 1,576 young slum dwellers aged 15-24 years we...

Self-build housing methods have been widely used in traditional western Nigeria in housing development. Recently however, there has been a shift to other westernize concepts of housing development which are observed to be more capital intensive than the traditional methods. While these westernized concepts are beneficial to the few high income earners, the urban poor who are in the majority are...

Unfettered growth of slums is a daunting transition challenge and many upgrading programs fail to sustainably improve the livelihoods slum residents. This paper elaborates transitions perspective on structural tensions that may lead success or failure programs. We conceptualize as urban subsystems, governed by sociotechnical (infrastructure) socioeconomic livelihood regimes (related production ...

OBJECTIVE To study the burden and associated risk factors for elevated blood lead levels among pre-school children (15-24 months) in urban Vellore, and to study its effects on child cognition and anemia. DESIGN An investigative study through Mal-ED cohort. SETTING Eight adjacent urban slums in Vellore, Tamil Nadu. PARTICIPANTS 251 babies recruited through Mal-ED Network. OUTCOME MEASURE...

BACKGROUND Antenatal Care (ANC) is one of the crucial factors in ensuring healthy outcomes in women and newborns. Nutrition education and counselling is an integral part of ANC that influences maternal and child health outcomes. A cross sectional study was conducted in Pregnant Women (PW) and mothers who had delivered in the past three months; Recently Delivered Women (RDW) in urban slums of No...

Introduction About 60% of Nairobi residents live in slums with higher poverty, population density prevalence diseases and lower health access than the city average. Some residents own livestock or in are in contact with its products. Most slums dwellers work outside slums. Thus, health surveillance in slum area is vital because of potential disease outbreaks and spread. Yet, little is known on ...

Urban slums are proliferating in the developing countries. A corollary of this structural transformation is the increasing recognition of an urban penalty wherein slum populations exhibit notable inequalities in health relative to non-slum urban residents and even rural populations. The built urban environment, in turn, is a crucial context within which the social production of disproportionate...

For the foreseeable future, world population growth will be mainly concentrated in the cities of developing countries. According to the United Nations (2000), by the year 2030 the world’s population will exceed today’s total by 2.06 billion persons, and some 1.94 billion of these will be added to the urban areas of lowincome countries. By 2030, it is believed, all developing regions will have c...