BACKGROUND Despite the increasing prevalence of diabetes and other health consequences of obesity, little is known on the metabolic profile across categories of body mass index (BMI) among African populations. We therefore assessed the prevalence and distribution of body size phenotypes among urban and rural Cameroonians. METHODS Adults (n = 1628; 41% rural dwellers) aged 24-74 years in 1994 ...

Urban air pollution is an important environmental factor that is effecting a large portion of urban dwellers in developing economies. Due to the limitations of dose and impact nature, direct measurement of negative implications of urban air pollution is difficult and WHO has developed indirect methods such as Environmental Burden of Disease. However, in this study to measure the economic costs ...

Background: The population of urban areas has been increasing in an alarming rate. The people of urban slums increased faster than non-slum areas over the decades. At present more than one-third of the urban people are slum dwellers in Bangladesh. Objectives: The study aims to investigate the factors affecting contraceptive use and method choice among women living in the urban slums in Banglade...

Communities of place feature prominently in new urbanism movements and in master-planned inner-city developments that result from urban renewal. This paper’s point of departure is the stark contrast between the widespread use of mobile and ubiquitous media and communications technology by urban dwellers on the one hand and endemic forms of urban alienation and the disappearance or non-existence...

Housing, food, and water are considered to be basic requirements for daily living. Unfortunately, inadequate housing with poor water supply, sanitation, and ventilation threatens the lives and health of some 600 million urban dwellers worldwide (see, among others, Cebu Study Team 1991; S. A. Esrey et al. 1991; Galiani, Gertler, and Ernesto Schargrodsky 2005; and World Bank 2005). For this reaso...

The case study on the Slum Improvement Project (SIP) in Dhaka Metropolitan City, by the Local Government Engineering Department (as of 1991), was undertaken to highlight some of the innovative socio-economic programmes implemented for urban slum dwellers, as well as some lessons learned from them. The overall achievement of the SIP is satisfactory, as the model made a breakthrough in providing ...

BACKGROUND Rural-to-urban migration in low- and middle-income countries causes an increase in individual cardiovascular risk. Cost-effective interventions at early stages of the natural history of coronary disease such as angina may stem an epidemic of premature coronary deaths in these countries. However, there are few data on the prevalence of angina in developing countries, whilst the unders...

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...