ABSTRACT

Diarrhoea remains the major cause of morbidity and mortality among under-five children in many developing countries including Nigeria. This study examined sex of the child, age of the mother, parity, birth order, when the child was put into breastfeeding, mother’s highest level of education, place of residence, wealth index, toilet facility and source of drinking water in association with diarrhoea among under-five children in Nigeria. Data were obtained from the 2013 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey. The data were analysed using both logistic regression and the exponentiated logistic regression where one shape parameter was introduced into the binary logistic regression to make a two shape parameter distribution. These models were used to determine the risk factors of diarrhoea using predictors like age of the mother, birth order, mother’s highest educational level, sex of the child, place of residence, wealth quintile, toilet facility, when the child was put into breastfeeding, source of drinking water and parity. The results obtained from binary logistic regression were compared with the result from exponentiated logistic regression using AIC. A total of 2,924 or (10.6%) children under the age of five were captured in the two weeks preceding the survey. Result shows that majority of children who were diagnosed of diarrhoea were children of mothers whose age were less than 20 years (15.0%), children whose birth order were 4+ (11.3%), children of women with parity 4+ (10.7%), and children of mothers with no education (12.8%). The prevalence of diarrhoea was also found to be slightly higher in males (10.5%) than female children (10.4%). The percentage of children with diarrhoea in the rural areas (11.4%) was higher than that of the urban (9.3%).  In terms of source of drinking water, children whose household obtain drinking water from unprotected sources show higher prevalence of diarrhoea (12.1%) as compared with the protected sources of drinking water. Risk factors that were found to be significantly associated with diarrhoea morbidity among children under five years of age were the mother’s age (WS = 163.02, p < 0.0001), birth order (WS = 175.31, p < 0.0001), mother’s educational level (WS = 3.33, p < 0.0343), parity (WS = 122.47, p < 0.0001) and source of drinking water (WS = 14.05, p < 0.0001) while other risk factors like sex of the child, place of residence, wealth index and toilet facilities were not statistically significant (p < 0.05). The findings show that among the risk factors considered, age of the mother at birth was the most significantly related to the incidence of diarrhoea among under-five year children in Nigeria.