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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutritional Epidemiology
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2024.1403591

Determinants of Severe Acute Malnutrition among under-Five Children in Ethiopia: Analysis Using Data from 2016 Ethiopia Demographic and Health Survey

Provisionally accepted
Abriham S. Areba Abriham S. Areba 1,2*Desta E. Abame Desta E. Abame 2Lire L. Tirore Lire L. Tirore 3Bisrat F. Bubamo Bisrat F. Bubamo 2
  • 1 Wachemo University, Hosaena, Ethiopia
  • 2 Department of Public Health, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, Wachemo University, Hossana, Ethiopia
  • 3 Department of Health Informatics, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, Wachemo University, Hosanna, Ethiopia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Objective: Malnutrition is a silent killer that is under-reported, under-addressed, and as a result prioritized. The aim of this study was to determinants of severe acute malnutrition among underfive children in Ethiopia.Methods: Cross-sectional data from the 2016 Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey were used. A total of 6170 under-five children were included in the current analysis. The data was cleaned and analyzed using STATA 14. An adjusted odds ratio (AOR) and their 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated to determine the association between factors and outcomes. A pvalue of less than 0.05 was considered significant in multivariable logistic regression.In multivariable logistic regression revealed that under-five children show that age of children in months 6-11 (AOR=1.52, 95% CI: 1.25, 1.86), 12-23 (AOR=1.98, 95% CI: 1.65, 2.37), and 24-59 months (AOR=1.71, 95% CI: 1.40, 2.08), birth order between 4 th and 5 th (AOR=1.24, 95% CI: 1.01, 1.54), having fever (AOR=1.31, 95% CI: 1.09, 1.58), anemic children (AOR=1.21, 95% CI: 1.07, 1.36), age of mothers in years 25-34 (AOR= 0.60, 95% CI: 0.51, 0.72) and 35-49 (AOR=0.49, 95% CI: 0.39, 0.63), antenatal care visits (AOR=0.83, 95% CI: 0.71, 0.92), rural residence (AOR=2.98, 95% CI: 2.54, 3.49), and solid fuels users (AOR=2.46, 95% CI: 1.86, 3.26) were significant predictors.Conclusions: Older age of children, higher birth order, having fever, anemic children, living rural, and solid fuel users were more suffer from severe acute malnutrition while elder age of mothers and having antenatal care visits reduced severe acute malnutrition from the significant predictors.

    Keywords: Severe acute malnutrition, Under-five children, Demographic and Health Survey, Ethiopia, Malnutition

    Received: 04 Apr 2024; Accepted: 01 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Areba, Abame, Tirore and Bubamo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Abriham S. Areba, Wachemo University, Hosaena, Ethiopia

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