Household Injuries: A Comparative Study among Rural and Urban Area of Allahabad District

The term ‘injury’ is used to describe the physical damage that results when a human body is suddenly or briefly subjected to intolerable levels of energy. A sprained ankle, severe backache, dog bite, any hurt or damage to the body is referred as injury. This study is planned out to compare the socioeconomic profile of the persons having household injuries in rural and urban area and also finds out the prevalence of household injuries in rural and urban area.

The present study is a cross sectional descriptive study was conducted on residents of urban and rural areas of Allahabad district. Data was collected by a structured questionnaire designed for the purpose.

A total 2583 respondents of Allahabad district were covered. Out of them 1437(55.6%) were from rural community and 1146(44.6%) were from urban community with average age of rural and urban respondents was 29 years and 32 years respectively. Age wise distribution showed that majority 1506(58.3) were in the age group of 15–49 years followed by age 50 years and above were 464(18%). Among rural areas majority were illiterate 524(36.46%) while in urban areas, majority of the respondents were educated 989(86.30%) and only 157(13.70%) were illiterate. Out of total respondents 272(10.5%) who had history of household injuries during the recall period of preceding six months. The overall prevalence come out to be 210/1000/year in this present study majority of the injured respondents were from rural areas 171(62.87%) and the rest were from urban areas 101(37.13%). Prevalence of household injuries was significantly higher among rural areas as compared to urban areas being 238/1000/year and 176/1000/year respectively.

Based on the study findings it was concluded that injury causes large number of morbidity in Allahabad both in rural and urban areas.