Diseases and Health Condition of Street Hawkers in Bangladesh”

Abstract

Street hawkers are identified as self-employed workers in the informal sector who offer their labor to sell goods and services on the street without having any permanent built-up structure. Various studies have already confirmed the fact that street hawkers play a significant role to fulfill the demands of urban dwellers in Dhaka – the capital and largest city of Bangladesh. This paper attempts to study the disease and health conditions and treatment patterns of street hawkers. And to know the socio-demographic status of street hawkers. The paper is based on the information collected from the field survey. After the target decided, a structured questionnaire was prepared (close ended questions) with very few open ended questions. The information was obtained via face-to-face interviews and the street hawkers were asked about their demographic characteristics, occupational information, socioeconomic conditions, work shifts, health status, general health impairments (accidents, injuries, complaints, and diseases), and knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding self-protective behaviors. Findings revealed that the study was conducted on 78.66% male and 21.33% female. 94.9% hawkers are in their economically active years, significant portion of hawkers (38%) were non literate. most of the hawkers daily income is from 500-1500 taka (50%) as most of them belong to average monthly income. Majority of the street hawkers are found as lower middle class people with lower standard of living. Majorly (73.33%) faced serious health challenges like body pain including legs pain, back pain, neck pain, hands pain, headache, and joint pain and a majority percentage of street hawker 89.33% had tendency to have lunch irregularly due to their working duration. The study also revealed that majority percentage 48.43% of female street hawkers took the service of traditional birth attendant during child birth through vaginal delivery due to lack of sufficient knowledge about health risk for herself and her babies too. During this study some unfavorable effects are also visible such as lack of formalization and weak management system, which create problems in urban areas by producing street garbage and gathering crowd on the footpath. By the implementation of proper public management system, street hawkers would become a role model for urban dwellers of Dhaka city.