Our Stand (49)
Affordable housing is a human, social, economic and cultural right to be enjoyed by all. The role it plays in the economic activities of a nation is not fully recognized by the authorities in the country. Housing with its numerous benefits, provides employment opportunities, good quality life and improved standard of living. It also affords the improvement in psychological behaviors.
When the health of one is in a good state, it becomes a bedrock on achieving or meet other human needs. When one is associated with poor housing conditions, especially children, they become prone to physical injuries, mental health issues, respiratory infections, toilet infections, poor nutrition, chronic illness and others.
Addressing housing challenges offers those in authority an opportunity to work on key determinants of health. This is to say that housing is integral to health as slums associated with poor housing conditions is a major problem.
Characteristics of houses with poor standards include lack of safe affordable drinking water, inadequate waste disposal system, uninvited insects like mosquitoes that cause malaria, flies that carry germs, scorpion bites that cause an unusual head, eye and neck movements, difficulty in breathing, accelerated heart rate, nausea and vomiting, cockroaches synonymous with poor hygiene. Their feeding and nesting habits mean they can accumulate a range of pathogenic organisms which they can transmit to food and surfaces where they feed and crawl.
Poor housing areas like slums are usually overcrowded and can easily be a point for the transmission of communicable diseases and respiratory infections like tuberculosis, measles, Hepatitis A and B, flu. Some of these communicable diseases can spread commonly through fecal-oral, food, insect bites, contact with contaminated fomites, droplets or skin contact.
Houses in swampy, damp, moldy or cold areas are easily associated with chronic respiratory malfunctions like asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pneumonia and lung diseases. Lack of water control is one of the causes of swampy areas and dampness.
Lack of affordable housing is linked with poor nutrition, especially children and can have harmful effects on their development. Many persons pay almost more than half of their annual income to have shelter and this can have a huge impact on the health of households, the strength to cater for life’s other necessities like food. Many low income earners face the struggle to achieve or maintain a balanced diet. Lack of good government regulations, policies also contribute to this problem, as high prices of food added with inadequate low income to meet priority needs limit access to healthy meals options. Lack of options makes one to settle for an enforced less.
The government through developers can play a pivotal role in supporting inhabitants with measures that can lead to nutritious living.
