Child health inequities in developing countries

Malnutrition among the urban poor in sub-Saharan Africa

By: Fotso, JC
Published in: International Journal for Equity in Health , 2006. 5:9
Via: Eldis

This paper, in the International Journal for Equity in Health, compares the magnitude of inequities in child malnutrition across urban and rural areas in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and investigates the extent to which disparities within urban areas are accounted for by the characteristics of communities, households and individuals. The paper finds that across countries in SSA, there are inequalities between socioeconomic groups in the likelihood of children having low height for their age – an indicator of malnutrition. Though these inequalities exist in both urban and rural areas, they are larger in urban areas. The levels of education of a child’s parents, and the socioeconomic status of the community, account for some of these inequalities, but household wealth is the most important factor.

The paper concludes that there are enormous disparities between the poor and the non-poor in urban areas of SSA. The authors recommend that specific policies geared at preferentially improving the health and nutrition of the urban poor should be implemented. To successfully monitor the gaps between urban poor and non-poor, existing data collection programmes such as the Demographic and Health Survey and other nationally representative surveys should be re-designed to capture the changing patterns of the spatial distribution of population.