Spatial Epidemiology of Urban Health Risks in Select West African Cities

West African cities face critical societal challenges that are linked to environmental and health changes. These challenges are further exacerbated by urbanization dynamics, climate change, socio-economic mutation and lack of capacity for sustainable urban development, governance and basic services delivery. The deficiency of environmental sanitation and ecosystem services have led to high complexity of urban health risks inequalities, resulting in the need for more research on efficient urban health policies. The purpose of this contribution is to present the main findings on the spatial epidemiology of diarrhaea and malaria, and their associated risks factors in the following select West African cities. Spatial variability of exposure to diarrhaea and malaria transmission is linked to several health risks such as lack of access to water and sanitation, solid wastes management, urban flooding, precarious housing conditions, urban agriculture, socio-economic status and social practices and individual behaviours fluctuating according to the specificity of urban areas. These factors and their interconnections make some groups (differentiated by geography) more vulnerable to poor outcomes due to limited capacity to effectively respond to health risks and poor performance by the health system. We demonstrate the potential for a spatial epidemiology perspective that disaggregates data to, clusters of houses, neighbourhood, sector and municipality scale to support health policies and interventions, and how these results can contribute to achieving SDG 3 (Health and Well-Being for all) in African urban areas.