Anaemia in Children aged 6-59 Months in the Eastern and Northern Regions of Cameroon

Abstract

Early childhood is a very critical period for the future growth and development of children whose care is fundamentally urgent. Thus, the elimination of nutrition-related diseases such as anaemia that is likely to delay the achievement of targets 3.2 and 4.2 of the SDGs fits-in at the right time in this logic. Cameroon, like the rest of developing countries, has a high prevalence rate of anaemia. The situation is alarming in the three Northern and Eastern regions of the country. The objective of this article is to make a comparison of the explanatory factors of anaemia in the three Northern and Eastern regions through a three-level logistic regression. It appears from the individual characteristics that the anaemic state of the mother, her level of education, the age of the child explain anaemia in the study regions, except the nutritional state and the duration of breastfeeding which explain it distinctly in the three Northern and Eastern regions respectively. With regard to household characteristics, one and only one characteristic determines anaemia in each region, namely the main activity of the household head in the three Northern regions and the household standard of living in the Eastern region. No community characteristic was found to explain anaemia in the three Northern regions, unlike in the Eastern region where the type of place of residence, the proportion of educated women and the level of immunization coverage in the community are determining factors. The contribution of the article is to shed light on the common and specific determinants of anaemia in children aged 6-59 months three Northern and Eastern regions of Cameroon.