Abstract
Background: Climate change and consequent increases in rainfall variability may have negative consequences for the food production of subsistence farmers in West Africa with adverse impacts on nutrition and health. We explored the pathway from rainfall through diet up to child undernutrition for rural Burkina Faso.Methods: The study used data of a dynamic cohort with 1,439 children aged 7–60 months from the Nouna Health and Demographic Surveillance Site (HDSS) for 2017 to 2019. We assessed data on diets, height, weight, household characteristics, and daily precipitation (from 1981 to 2019). Principal component analysis was used to identify distinct child dietary patterns (Dietary Pattern Scores, DPS). These were related to 15 rainfall indicators by area to obtain a precipitation variability score (PVS) through reduced rank regression (RRR). Associations between the PVS and anthropometric measures, height-for-age (HAZ), and weight-for-height (WHZ), were examined using multi-level regression analysis.Results: Stunting (HAZ < −2) and wasting (WHZ < −2) were seen in 24 and 6% of the children. Three main dietary patterns were identified (market-based, vegetable-based, and legume-based diets) and showed mixed evidence for associations with child undernutrition. The RRR-derived PVS explained 14% of the total variance in these DPS. The PVS was characterized by more consecutive dry days during the rainy season, higher cumulative rainfall in July and more extremely wet days. A 1-point increase in the PVS was associated with a reduction of 0.029 (95% CI: −0.06, 0.00, p < 0.05) in HAZ in the unadjusted, and an increase by 0.032 (95% CI: 0.01, 0.06, p < 0.05) in WHZ in the fully adjusted model.Conclusion: Rainfall variability was associated with dietary patterns in young children of a rural population of Burkina Faso. Increased rainfall variability was associated with an increase in chronic undernutrition, but not in acute undernutrition among young children.
Highlights
Climate change drives increased weather variability and intensity such as by extreme rainfall events and mini-droughts during the rainy season
A 1-point increase in the precipitation variability score (PVS) was associated with a reduction in HAZ by 0.029 in the unadjusted model
In order to investigate the sensitivity of the PVS to the nutritional status, we investigated the association with a higher rainfall variability defined by an increase in the PVS by 2 and 3 SD
Summary
Climate change drives increased weather variability and intensity such as by extreme rainfall events and mini-droughts during the rainy season. While the 1970s and 1980s were marked by a long-lasting drought period in the Sahel region, some recovery of the rainfall including increased precipitation extremes [14, 15] in combination with an increase toward more extreme temperatures were observed in the last decades [2, 7, 8, 16] Those climatic changes can have severe negative implications on agricultural production and food availability, and lead to food insecurity and undernutrition in this region [2, 9, 17]. We explored the pathway from rainfall through diet up to child undernutrition for rural Burkina Faso
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