HEALTH CONDITIONS OF CLIMATE CHANGE EFFECTS IN COASTAL COMMUNITIES OF LAGOS METROPOLIS

Climate change is a reality and its effects are manifested in increasing temperature, rainfall and occurrence of floods and droughts. Past studies on the impacts of these effects focused mainly on food insecurity, conflicts, loss of lives and properties and infrastructural collapse. Arising from this fact, the paper examined weather related diseases of climate change effects in coastal communities of Lagos metropolis in order to determine the most vulnerable people and seek better adaptation measures. In addition the paper also utilizes Geographic Information System to show the extent of these health effects in the three selected communities each representing the low, medium and high income groups. A structured questionnaire was administered on 397 households of the selected coastal communities, using multi stage sampling technique. Different imageries covering the selected areas were used to show the climate change variability. Data analysis was descriptive and inferential using Pearson product moment correlation analysis. There was a strong positive correlation between the most prevalent disease (malaria) and socio-economic characteristics of the people in the communities. In addition, there was a strong positive correlation between the most prevalent climate change effect (flooding) and the diseases, especially malaria. Results equally showed a variability in the climate change and health conditions for the various communities. The conclusion is that malaria mostly affects the productive population across all communities especially in the low income communities. This has implications for the well-being and livelihoods of the entire population. It is, therefore suggested that communities around the flood prone areas should build defence structures and adequately dispose wastes in order to avert the breed of mosquitoes which is a malaria parasite.