English

Mahama Bashiru

doi:10.5897/ijmms2018.1388

Abstract

Diarrhea episodes among children under five years with its devastating consequences have been a concern to stakeholders in child survival strategy programs. Mothers are key in the prevention of diarrhea among children since they are the care givers. The main aim of this paper is to assess the trend and risk factors of under-five diarrheal disease in the study areas. Descriptive research design was employed for the study. A snowball sampling method was used to select 60 respondents for these study (this include 30 respondents each from a study area) and 19 health professionals were also contacted for the study. Data was analyzed using SPSS and Microsoft Excel and presented descriptively. The findings showed the causes of diarrhea as; contaminated food and poor food hygiene practices (96.7%), lack of personal hygiene (93.3%), poor sanitation (91.7%), and lack of maternal care (86.3%). Findings from expert’s survey showed that; lack of personal hygiene practices, poor food hygiene practices, contaminated food, and poor sanitation with each representing 100% respectively were some of the common determinants for the diarrheal morbidity and mortality. It is recommended that, the District Health Administration initiate health promotion and education programs to sensitize mothers’ on food hygiene practices. Key words: Diarrhea episode, children under-five morbidity and mortality.

Highlights

Diarrhea is the second leading cause of death of children under five, with approximately 760,000 of these children dying annually (WHO, 2015)
Nearly 760,000 under-5 children continue to die from diarrheal disease, and the majority of these deaths have been identified as being avoidable (Ramanaiah et al, 2015)
The fight against diarrheal diseases in under-5 children was the subject of several international interventions as well as regional and national interventions in low and middle-income countries (Rahman et al, 2014).diarrhea diseases remain linked largely to living conditions such as; poverty, lack of hygiene, lack of

Summary

Introduction

Diarrhea is the second leading cause of death of children under five, with approximately 760,000 of these children dying annually (WHO, 2015). Nearly 760,000 under-5 children continue to die from diarrheal disease, and the majority of these deaths have been identified as being avoidable (Ramanaiah et al, 2015).

Objectives

Results

Conclusion