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Displaced people are faced with over-crowded conditions in camps with children being the most vulnerable. This is because they are faced with myriad of challenges such as poor nutrition, breakdown of health infrastructure, disease epidemics, looting and violence. Others include unprotected sex especially when separated from their families. Displaced persons are prey to a host of diseases, most of which could be prevented. In this study the socio-economic and health impacts among internally displaced persons (IDPs) following floods in Nigeria were identified. Information on social, economic and health issues obtained from 432 household heads, nursing mothers and pregnant women from 17 IDP camps in three states was analyzed using SPSS version 20.0. Majority (58%) of IDPs had their occupation as farming and as a result of the flood, 299 (69.2%) people lost their means of livelihood with a concomitant decrease in income to a mean of $35.2. Victims' nutrition was affected, resulting 63.3 % having less to eat. Though the major source of water to the IDPs before the flood was rivers/streams and wells, there was no statistical significance (p=0.99) between the major source of water to the community even when they had access to pipe-borne water after the disaster.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY) RESEARCH PAPER.

Background: Despite the modest gains made under the millennium development goals, indices of child health for Nigeria remain poor. Improvement on these indices requires mitigating the causes of childhood mortality. Objective: We undertook this study to determine the leading cause(s) of childhood mortality in Nigeria from 2005 to 2009. Methods: Using stratified random sampling techniques, data on demographics and cause(s) of death of under-five children, who had died between 2005 and 2009, were collected from the patients’ records of seven teaching hospitals. Data were analyzed using IBM SPSS version 20.0. Results: The leading causes of childhood mortality from this survey were neonatal sepsis (30.1%), asphyxia (27.2%), preterm complications (25.8%), and acute respiratory illness (15.3%). Analysis of causes of death by geopolitical zones did not indicate any definite pattern, although the North-Central and South-West had the highest deaths due to respiratory tract infections. The highest death records from human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome came from North-East. In addition, Lagos in South-West was the most likely to have recorded death due to malaria (p<0.05). Preterm complications and neonatal sepsis accounted for the majority of the causes of death in low birth weight babies, whereas neonatal sepsis and asphyxia accounted for the majority of the causes of death in the appropriate birth weight group. Conclusions: This study supports the results of previous ones that childhood mortality was due to illnesses that were preventable and treatable. Knowledge of the causes and pattern of childhood mortality is essential to enable the health authorities to scale up appropriate interventions to reduce the burden. This will help the country to meet the target of reducing under-five mortality by two-thirds, few years after 2015.