Development of environmental health strategies for prevention of childhood diarrhoea in Sebeta town, Ethiopia

Abstract

The aim of this study was to assess and explore the household environmental health factors associated with the occurrence of diarrhoea in under five children in Sebeta town of Ethiopia, in order to develop environmental health strategies for prevention of childhood diarrhoea. A descriptive, quantitative, contextual and cross-sectional study, using stratified random sampling method, was used to conduct the research. The data collection was carried out from November 6 to 28, 2013 using structured interview schedules and a total of 477 households’ mothers/caregivers with under five children had participated in the study. In analyzing data, both bivariate and multivariate analyses were employed using SPSS software. The finding of the study shows that the prevalence of childhood diarrhoea was 9.9%. A number of risk factors including socio-demographic variables, water and hygienic practices, and knowledge risk factors showed significant association with childhood diarrhoea on bivariate analysis using chi-squared and Fischer's exact tests. Multivariate analysis using binary logistic regression was conducted to examine the significance of identified risk factors in bivariate analysis. The results of multivariate regression analysis shows that four variables were associated with risk of childhood diarrhoea; including type of toilet facility (AOR: 0.37; 95% CI 0.16 – 0.87; p=0.023), availability of specific place for handwashing (AOR: 0.40; 95% CI 0.18 – 0.90; p=0.026), availability of handwashing facility (AOR: 0.20; 95% CI 0.06 – 0.70; p=0.012) and mothers’ knowledge on diarrhoea causation (AOR: 3.09; 95% CI 1.24 – 7.68; p=0.015). Although childhood diarrhoea was found to be less prevalent as compared to national and regional prevalence rates, diarrhoea remains one of the causes of morbidity in children of the studied households. The findings of the study concludes that childhood diarrhoea has a number of environmental determinants, notably due to environmental health risk factors associated with lack of improved sanitation and hand-washing facilities and poor knowledge on diarrhoea causation. The study thus recommends that effective measures to curtail prevalence of diarrhoea in urban contexts should be substantially increased by enhancing urban sanitation promotion programmes with emphasis on accelerating universal access to improved sanitation and handwashing facilities, together with efforts in promoting proper hygiene behaviours.