Understanding the spatial context of sustainable urban health in Africa for the SDGs: some lessons from the corridors of deprivation in Ilorin, Nigeria

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine spatial clusters of urban deprivations using five domains and the influence of the observed pattern on household health status in Ilorin, Nigeria. Data were obtained through a household survey of the 20 wards of Ilorin metropolis. A systematic sampling method was used to select one out of every 10 houses in randomly selected streets in each ward while one household was selected through a simple accidental method of first contact in each building. In all, 800 household heads were sampled. A composite Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) was obtained by aggregating scores for each domain. Multiple correlation analysis was used to determine the relationship between the IMD and household health status. Deprivation in housing quality offered significant explanation (75.7%) for the variation in household health status (R = .87) (p < .05). Public health policies in the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals must consider housing characteristics within the city, classify areas according to needs, and determine areas, within the city, that require positive discrimination in health resource allocation.

Keywords:

• multiple deprivation
• urban health
• housing quality
• Ilorin

Acknowledgement

The author wishes to acknowledge the contributions of Professor Stanley I. Okafor of the Department of Geography, University of Ibadan for supervising the PhD thesis from which the case study reported in this paper was extracted.