A Study on Life Style and Disease Pattern of Slum Dwellers in Dhaka City

Abstract

Dhaka is the most densely populated city of Bangladesh.People migrant from rural areas towards Dhaka for their livelihood and thus leads gradually to create slums. Usually people live in slum faces unhealthy condition and also it leads to pollute the environment. It is evident that disease states of the inhabitants are strongly affected by lifestyle. Aim of the study is to find the relation between life style of these people and diseases, they usually suffer. Participants are randomly selected from different areas of Dhaka city like Meradia, Badda, Keraniganj, Doyaganj, Aftabnagar etc. Smoking habits, sanitation type, water treatment systems, food habits are largely related to asthma, diarrhea and skin diseases. Most of the slum dwellers use tubewell water for all puposes of their work, thus density of population, unhealthy life condition, unhealthy sanitary systems, lack of physical activity leads them to suffer by different diseases like Diarrhea (25 %), Hypertension (11%), Skin Disease (49%) are the common diseases in the slum dwellers. 57 % slum dwellers seek professional help for diseases condition. If this practice increases along with the hygienic life style than disease rate will decrease. Slum dwellers are not even properly aware about vaccination. If any step can be taken for awaring themselves about their life style, importance of vaccination etc, then the disease rate can be decreased at a significant rate.