Pattern of Disease Occurrence among Prisoners in Owerri Central Prison, Imo State, SouthEast Nigeria (A 5-Year Review: 2006-2011)

Abstract

Background: The history of prison in Nigeria is replete with poor environmental sanitation with associated health deterioration of the inmates. Some people view the situation as being normal, after all the inmates are offenders who do not deserve anything good. As a result, a lot of both communicable and non-communicable diseases occur amongst prisoners following adverse conditions such as poor sanitary conditions, overcrowding, poor feeding, lack of portable water and poor ventilation.

Objective: To evaluate the pattern of disease occurrence among prisoners in Owerri central prison. 

Methodology: This was a retrospective study of the prison inmates’ health records. The study population consisted of 1743 inmates who were incarcerated for various offences during the study period which covered five years (2006 – 2011). Information on their medical conditions and socio-demographic data were obtained from their medical case records. Data collected was calculated manually and analyzed using a computer software (excel sheet). It was presented using frequencies and percentages in tabular form.

Result: Malaria and Anaemia (36.4%) were the most prevalent of all the diseases. All patients who had malaria also suffered from anaemia. This was closely followed by upper respiratory tract infections (12.72%), typhoid fever and diarrhoea (10.69%), scabies (8.96%), tuberculosis (1.16%), Gunshot wounds (1.45%) and surgical cases (1.45%) appeared as the least prevalent cases.

Conclusion: The study revealed that age, gender and duration of stay were the disposing factors to the occurrence of diseases among the inmates of Owerri central prison.

Keywords: Pattern, disease, occurrence, prisoners