The nutritional status at six months is not associated to 6-24 month child mortality in the supplementation context: Case control matched study from rural area of Burkina Faso.

Abstract

Background: The death of children is a good indicator of health level and social development of country. In the context of food supplementation, the factors associated with child death remain little known. Objective: We examined the relation between nutritional status and child mortality in the context of food supplementation in rural area. Methods: We conducted matched case-control study nested in a cohort of child mother-pairs followed in the context of food supplementation. Conditional logistic regression was used to examine relation between nutritional status and child death. A significance level of 0.05 was considered significant. We use diagram causal model to identified variables for regression. Results: A total of 104 deaths and 208 controls were included in the study. The mean age of mothers was 26.13 ± 6 years. The only factor associated with univariate and multivariate analysis in the model used was the age of the mothers. In univariate, deceased children were 54% less likely to be born to mothers aged 20 to 34 compared to children born to mothers under 20 years of age (OR=0.46, 95% CI=[0.23-0.91] and P=0.027). The nutritional status of children, socioeconomic status, birth season, vaccinal status, and twins were not associated with the death of children in multivariate analysis. Conclusion: Nutritional status is not associated at child death in the context of food supplementation. Supplementation would therefore reduce the deaths of malnourished children.