Housing Quality of Mothers with Under five children: A comparative study of upland and riverine areas of Rivers State.

Abstract

Safe housing is fundamental to healthy living. Poor housing quality increases the burden of malnutrition in children globally and nearly half of the children under the age of five die annually due to malnutrition especially in areas with difficult accessibility. This study was designed to compare the housing quality of mothers with under-five children in the upland area with those in the riverine areas of Rivers state. A cross-sectional study involving a multistage stratified random sampling method to select 316 mother/child pairs in six Local Government Areas of Rivers state was adopted. A pretested semi-structured interviewer-administered questionnaire was used. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the data. In the upland area about 60% of the households lived in apartments with shared facilities and about a quarter practiced open defecation (25.2%). While more than three-quarter of the households (76.5%) resided in apartments with shared facilities and open defecation was practiced by more than half (56.0%) of the households in the riverine area. Although borehole use was the predominant source of household water supply, the use of public taps was more pronounced in the riverine (21.4%). Bush refuse dumping was predominant in the upland (56.9%) while the ocean (78.9%) was similarly preferred by households in the riverine area. Most mothers lived in apartments where basic facilities were shared and open defecation was high. Efforts should be geared towards providing sanitary facilities to households especially in the riverine communities and sensitisation programmes should be organised to improve hygiene awareness.