Duration of Breastfeeding and the Risk of Diarrheal Illness in Children Below Age of 2 Years in South Africa, 2016: A CrossSectional Study

Abstract

Background: Childhood diarrheal illness is a threat to public health in relation to child health. The prevalence is high in regions like South Asia and Sub-Saharan regions. These regions contribute to over three-quarters of the diarrheal illness cases in the world. However, there has been evidence on how the duration of breastfeeding reduces the risk of childhood diarrheal illness in infants. Aim: To explore the impact of the duration of breastfeeding on the occurrence of childhood diarrheal illness in a sample of children below the age of 2 years in South Africa, 2016. Methods: A cross-sectional study was employed that used secondary data for analysis from the South Africa Demography and Health Surveys, 2016. Six Hundred and Sixty-one participants that were mother-child pairs were used in the final study. Frequency and distribution were used to describe the study population baseline characteristic. Bivariate and multivariate were used to find the relationship between diarrheal illness and other factors (vaccination, rotavirus vaccine etc.). Poisson regression was used to find the predictors of diarrheal illness. Results: The prevalence of childhood diarrheal illness was 13.2% (n=87) for breastfeeding infants. Multivariate analysis showed that the duration of breastfeeding is associated with childhood diarrheal illness (RR:2.34: 95% CL: 1.11-4.94 p=0.03). Chi-square was employed, and it showed a significant interaction between the duration of breastfeeding and diarrheal illness ((X2 (2) = 8.06, p<.05) and therefore null hypothesis was rejected. The age of a child and the duration of breastfeeding were the only significant variables in the study, and the rest were not significant. Conclusion: The longer the duration of breastfeeding, the more the child suffers from a diarrheal illness. Breastfeeding alone does not prevent diarrheal illness among infants, so more exploration in future is required to verify factors that are associated with breastfeeding in the prevention of diarrheal such as the biological nature of the child and the mother’s milk content. More emphasis on health education concerning breastfeeding and diarrheal illness with mainly targeting the rural areas.