Five Year Review of Disease Profile of Inmates in Three Prison Formations in Kaduna State, Nigeria: A Case Control Study

Abstract

Prisons have been in existence in most parts of Nigerian since her inception as a country and it has served as correctional institutions for custody, reformation, rehabilitation and reintegration. The inmates are reported to exhibit poorer health status than the general population due to overcrowding and poor sanitary conditions which provided a favourable breeding ground for various disease conditions. However, existing information on the overall disease profile of Nigerian prisons is scanty. This study assessed a five year disease profiles of inmates in three prison formations in Kaduna state, northwestern, Nigeria. A retrospective study of 24,327 cases of the inmate's monthly morbidity statistics from January 2007 to December 2011 was carried out. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software packages was used for data analysis. Psychiatric cases (24.1%) constituted the most prevalent disease category among inmates. This was followed by gastrointestinal diseases (22.6%), diseases of the respiratory tract (10.9%), dermatology/allergy (5.4%) and cardiovascular diseases (2.4%). Among the specific conditions examined malaria (21.6%) was found to be the most prevalent condition, followed by accidents/deliberate harms (3.6%), and tumours (0.6%). Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS constitute 0.2% and 0.1% respectively. There is a huge communicable and non communicable disease burden among inmates in Kaduna State, Nigeria. We recommend health education, adequate sanitation, proper nutrition and mental care interventions in order to provide adequate health care to inmates.

Keywords: Inmates, Disease profile, Kaduna State, Nigeria.