The Prevalence of Diarrheal Disease in under Five Children and associated Risk Factors in Wolitta Soddo Town, Southern, Ethiopia

Abstract

Though the relationship between environmental risk factors and the occurrence of diarrhea in children have been documented elsewhere, there are limited studies in Ethiopia in general and in Soddo Town in particular. The present study assessed the prevalence and associated risk factors of under-five children diarrheal disease Community-based cross-sectional study was conducted in Soddo town, Southern Ethiopia. Nine hundred seventy (970) mothers/ care takers of index under-five children living in the households selected by systematic random sampling from Kebeles in the town constituted the study population. Data were collected using structured and pre-tested questionnaire, entered into a computer, edited and cleaned by using Epi info version 3.5.4 and analyzed using SPSS for windows version 16.0. Binary logistic regression model was used to calculate the Odds ratios and 95% confidence interval for the different risk factors and the level of significance was set at P < 0.05. Out of 970 sampled mother/caretaker-child pairs, 954 participated in the study and giving a response rate of 98.4%. The mean ages of the respondents and the index children were 27.62 (+5.03SD) years and 26.41(+15.89 SD) months, respectively. Prevalence of diarrheal disease over a period of two weeks preceding the study was about 11%. In the Bivariate analysis, a number of risk factors including monthly income less than five hundred birr and age of the child (P<0.05) appeared to be significantly associated with under-five childhood diarrheal disease and number of siblings under 5 years in a household, monthly income less than 500Birr and the age 12-23 months of the child were the only significant variables on multivariate analyses (P< 0.05). As diarrheal disease was major problem among under-five children in Soddo town. Appropriate intervention programs targeting Child birth spacing and improving the monthly income of households should be designed.