People, Places, and Health Variations: A Case of Malaria Incidence in Ibadan, Nigeria

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationships between the population’s levels of social well-being and places of residence, and how these underlie the incidence of malaria in a traditional African city. Using a stratified sampling technique with population density as the parameter, a total of 15 localities from the 5 metropolitan LGAs in Ibadan typifying the low, medium and high density residential areas were selected for the study. Questionnaires were administered on 1,084 randomly selected household heads. The data were analyzed using the Chi Square and One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) statistics, while the aggregated scores representing respondents’ level of social well-being were correlated with the individual’s household frequency of treating malaria using the Pearson Product Moment Correlation technique. The results indicate that residents of low density residential areas ranked highest in social well-being and had the best health outcomes evidenced by the lowest incidence of malaria among the three residential classes