Prevalence and factors of Diarrhea among under-five children in Ethiopia

Yenew Alemu Mihret*

1.Introduction

Diarrhea is defined as the passage of three or loose or watery stools within a day or unusual frequency of diarrhea episodes. Diarrhea disease is the cause of the death of under-five children, children every year globally killing around 760, 000, and above 90% consequences for polluted nutrition and water sources in the world and Diarrhea is also the major causes of child mortality, mostly in children less than five years of age living in low and middle-income countries. The risk of a child dying before becoming the age of underfive children was highest in the World health organization African Region (90 per 1000 live births), which is approximately seven times higher than that in the World health organization European Region (12 per 1000 live births). Diarrhea kills an estimated 1.8 million, people every year, among the ages of under-five children in developing countries, diarrhea accounted for 21% of all deaths, diarrhea was also responsible for 25 to 75% of all childhood diseases (accounted for about 14% of outpatient visits and 16% of hospital admissions). Of the estimated total of 10.6 million deaths among children younger than five years of age worldwide, 42% occurred in the African region. Ethiopia is one of the sub-Saharan African countries sharing the high burden of diarrhea mortality due to living conditions, high prevalence of the disorder, lack of safe intake water,

4.Conclusion

This study used data from the 2016 Ethiopia demography and health survey. Region, child lives with whom and source of drinking water were statistically significant factors for the prevalence of diarrhea under the age of under-five children. A child taking protected water, and a child living with his or her family is highly appreciated for reducing the prevalence of diarrhea among the ages of under-five children. In addition, planning for better access to health facilities for each region.

3.Discussion

This study identified the risk factors associated with diarrhea among under-five children in the study area using the 2016 Ethiopia demography and health survey. This result indicated that the occurrence of diarrhea was observed in the Tigray region, 7.8% followed by Southern nations, nationalities, and people’s region, Amhara and Oromia regions, 2.9%, 2.8%, and 1.8%, respectively. The odds of the occurrence of diarrhea among the ages of underfive children from Amhara, Oromia, and Southern nations, nationalities, and people’s regions were less than as comparing to the Tigray region. This is inconsistent with findings from other studies. The present study found that the odds of diarrhea status of children for taking protected water were lower than unprotected (unsafe) water. A similar study in Ethiopia found that drinking unprotected water tends to increase the occurrence of diarrhea among the ages of under-five kids. Another study in sub-Saharan African, Indonesia and Malaysia also stated that the dominance of diarrhea among the ages of under-five youngsters for taking unprotected water is higher than drinking protected water. The child living with who is one of the major factors for determining the prevalence of diarrhea disease under-five children. According to the results of this study, it was found that the odds of prevalence of diarrhea in child lives with others were higher than that of children live his or her families. This may be due to misconception, and the negative attitude of the caregivers toward the causes of diarrhea. A study conducted in Ethiopia found that children living with others were more probable to the prevalence of diarrhea as linked to broods living with the respondents. Another study in Kenya and Nigeria also found that children living with others were at a high risk for the prevalence of diarrhea [13].

Discuss the results

The prevalence of diarrhea among the ages of under-five children was a total of 5,335 children in Ethiopia and out of these, 15.5 % of children with diarrhea. 7.8%, 2.8%, 1.8% and 2.9% of children in Tigray, Amhara, Oromia, and Southern nations, nationalities, and people’s regions were the prevalence of diarrhea among the ages of under-five children, respectively. In addition, 12.1% and 3.4% of children living with respondents and others were prevalence of diarrhea, respectively. Similarly, 7.7% and 7.8% of a child was the prevalence of diarrhea by taking unprotected and protected water, respectively. Based on the chi-square test; region (p-value=0. 000), currently pregnant mothers (p-value=0. 009), child lives with whom (p-value=0. 000) and source of drinking water (p-value=0. 000) were significantly associated with the prevalence of diarrhea among the ages of under-five children (Table 1) [7-10].

All variables are not significant, the most appropriating variables are selected by using the back-ward selection method. Based on the data, the calculated p-value of the Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness-of-fit test statistic (p value=0.055) is greater than 0.05, we conclude that the model is adequate. The level of significance (α) for this study was set at 0.05. The outcomes of this study showed that the region had a significant factor in the prevalence of diarrhea among the ages of under-five children. The expected value of the occurrence of diarrhea among under-five children from Amhara, Oromia, and Southern nations, nationalities, and people’s region were 0.47, 0.77 and 0.72 times lower than the occurrence of diarrhea among the ages of underfive children in Tigray, respectively, controlling for the other variables in the model. When we look at the source of drinking water, the odds of the occurrence of diarrhea among under-five children was 0.78 times lower than children taking protected water as compared to unprotected water. In addition, the odds of the occurrence of diarrhea among under-five children from a child's lives with others were 5.95 times higher than the occurrence of diarrhea for the child lives with the respondents (his or her family) (Table 2) [11,12].