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Background Acute respiratory tract infection (ARI) is one of the leading causes of illness and mortality in children under the age of five worldwide. Pneumonia, which is caused by a respiratory tract infection, kills about 1.9 million children under the age of 5 years around the world. The majority of these deaths occur in underdeveloped countries. According to the 2016 Ethiopia Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS), the prevalence rate of ARI in Ethiopia was 7%. Prevalence is defined as the number of infectious diseases present at a given period in relation to the total number of children under the age of five who have been exposed to ARI. The goal of this study was to determine the risk factors for acute respiratory infection among children under the age of five in Ethiopia. Methods To provide representative samples of the population, a community-based cross-sectional sampling scheme was designed. Bayesian multilevel approach was employed to assess factors associated with the prevalence of ARI among children under age five in Ethiopia. The data was collected from 10,641 children under the age of 5 years out of which 9918 children were considered in this study. Results The ARI prevalence rate in children under the age of 5 years was assessed to be 8.4%, somewhat higher than the country’s anticipated prevalence rate. Children whose mothers did not have a high level of education had the highest prevalence of ARI. The key health, environmental, and nutritional factors influencing the proportion of children with ARI differed by area. Tigray (15.3%) and Oromia (14.4%) had the highest prevalence of ARI, while Benishangul Gumuz had the lowest prevalence (2.6%). The use of vitamin A was investigated, and the results revealed that roughly 43.1% of those who received vitamin A had the lowest prevalence of ARI (7.7%) as compared to those who did not receive vitamin A. Diarrhea affected 11.1% of children under the age of five, with the highest frequency of ARI (24.6%) and the highest prevalence of ARI reported in children whose drinking water source was unprotected/unimproved (9.4%). Conclusions The prevalence of ARI among children under the age of 5 years was found to be strongly affected by the child’s age, household wealth index, mother’s educational level, vitamin A supplement, history of diarrhea, maternal work, stunting, and drinking water source. The study also found that the incidence of ARI varies significantly between and within Ethiopian areas. When intending to improve the health status of Ethiopian children, those predictive variables should be taken into consideration.

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Abstract:Major progress has been made over the last decades in reducing the prevalence of malnutrition amongst children less than 5 years of age in developing countries. Approximately 27% of children under the age of 5 in these countries are still malnourished. This work focuses on the childhood malnutrition in Gamo Gofa Zone, Ethiopia. This study examined the association between demographic and socioeconomic determinants and the malnutrition problem in children less than 5 years of age using Data obtained from both rural and urban sampled surveys conducted in sample Woredas from December 1 to January 5, 2013. The study on the Child undernutrition and underweight prevalence in Gamo Gofa has allowed us to quantify the negative impacts of child undernutrition in both social and economic terms. The results revealed that as many as 75% of all cases of child undernutrition and its related pathologies go untreated. It is also observed that about 35% of the health costs associated with undernutrition occur before the child turns 1 year-old. Generally, The results of the analysis show that place of residence, employment status of mother, employment status of partners, educational status of mothers, diarrhea, household economic level and source of drinking water were found to be the most important determinants of health/nutritional status of children. The study revealed that socio-economic, demographic and health and environmental variables have significant effects on the nutritional and health status of children in Ethiopia.

Background The first few minutes after birth are the most dangerous for the survival of an infant. Babies in neonatal intensive care units are either under heated or overheated, and hypothermic infants remain hypothermic or develop a fever. As a result, special attention must be paid to monitoring and maintaining the time of recovery from hypothermia states. Despite numerous studies, only a few have examined the transition from neonatal hypothermia and associated risk factors in depth. Method A retrospective observational study was conducted to track axillary temperatures taken at the time of neonatal intensive care unit admission, which were then tracked every 30 minutes until the newborn’s temperature stabilized. All hypothermic neonates admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit between January 2018 and December 2020 was included in the study. Temperature data were available at birth and within the first three hours of admission for 391 eligible hypothermic neonates. The effect of factors on the transition rate in different states of hypothermia was estimated using a multi-state Markov model. Result The likelihood of progressing from mild to severe hypothermia was 5%, while the likelihood of progressing to normal was 34%. The average time spent in a severe hypothermia state was 48, 35, and 24 minutes for three different levels of birth weight, and 53, 41, and 31 minutes for low, moderate, and normal Apgar scores, respectively. Furthermore, the mean sojourn time in a severe hypothermia state was 48, 39, and 31 minutes for three different levels of high, normal, and low pulse rate, respectively. Conclusion For hypothermic survivors within the first three hours of life, very low birth weight, low Apgar, and high pulse rate had the strongest association with hypothermia and took the longest time to improve/recover. As a result, there is an urgent need to train all levels of staff dealing with maintaining the time of recovery from neonatal hypothermia.