Factors associated with adverse nutritional status of children in sub‐Saharan Africa: Evidence from the Demographic and Health Surveys from 31 countries

Abstract

Undernutrition is linked to almost half of all deaths in under-five children. In 2019, 144 million under-five children suffered from stunting and 47 million suffered from wasting. This study examined the factors that influence adverse nutritional status of children in sub-Saharan Africa. The study used data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) of 31 countries, which involved 189,195 children under age 5. Binary logistic regression was used to examine the relationships between the independent variables and adverse nutritional status of children. About 26% of the children in the 31 countries in sub-Saharan Africa considered in this study are stunted, 6% are wasted and 21% are underweight. Close to 31% of children whose mothers have no education are stunted, 9% are wasted and 28% are underweight. Adverse nutritional status of children is significantly associated with maternal age, education, household wealth, residence, antenatal care attendance, mass media exposure, child's sex and size of child at birth. This study has shown that adverse nutritional status of children is a major challenge in sub-Saharan Africa. Efforts at improving nutritional status of children should include poverty alleviation initiatives at individual and household levels, increase in women's educational level and improvement in living conditions in rural areas.

Determinants of coexistence of stunting, wasting, and underweight among children under five years in the Gambia; evidence from 2019/20 Gambian demographic health survey: application of multivariate binary logistic regression model

“…Malnutrition has various causes, which include illnesses, inadequate diets, and environmental and socioeconomic characteristics [20]. The age of the child in a month [20][21][22][23], gender of the child [24,25], birth size of the child [26,27], birth order [4,28], maternal education [28,29], mother's body mass index [24,29], household wealth index [4,21,30], source of drinking water [22,30], family size [24], region [22], residence [24], religion [31], ethnicity [32], sex of household head [30], husband education level [4,30], breastfeeding status [32,33], sex of children [34,35], diarrhea [32,36], fever and cough [31,32] in the last 2 weeks prior to the survey, birth type of children [22,28], number of under-five children [27], maternal anemia [9] and child anemia [22] were the determinants of children's nutritional status in Gambia which have been identified.…”

“…To the best of the researchers' knowledge, no study has been conducted on the determinants of the coexistence of undernutrition indicators in Gambia. In Nepal, Ethiopia, Uganda, Bangladesh, East Africa, Cameron, Ghana, Sub-Sahara Africa, Gambia, Tanzania, and Mozambique [4,10,20,22,27,28,[33][34][35][37][38][39], stunting, underweight, and wasting have all been extensively studied. However, little attention has been paid to their association, and literature is scarce, particularly in Gambia, so we will conduct a separate analysis of stunting, underweight, and wasting in children under the age of five, as previously done by studies [4,10,20,22,27,28,[33][34][35][37][38][39], using ordinal or binary logistic regression.…”

“…In Nepal, Ethiopia, Uganda, Bangladesh, East Africa, Cameron, Ghana, Sub-Sahara Africa, Gambia, Tanzania, and Mozambique [4,10,20,22,27,28,[33][34][35][37][38][39], stunting, underweight, and wasting have all been extensively studied. However, little attention has been paid to their association, and literature is scarce, particularly in Gambia, so we will conduct a separate analysis of stunting, underweight, and wasting in children under the age of five, as previously done by studies [4,10,20,22,27,28,[33][34][35][37][38][39], using ordinal or binary logistic regression. However, when using binary or ordinal logistic regression, the association between stunting, underweight, and wasting is ignored.…”

Influence of Maternal Exposure to Mass Media on Growth Stunting Among Children Under Five: Mediation Analysis Through the Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Program

“…The use of mass media has also been associated with reduced rates of stunting. In sub-Saharan Africa, stunting is significantly associated with mass media exposure [ 27 - 29 ]. Studies conducted in other low- or middle-income countries, such as Bangladesh [ 30 ], Indonesia [ 31 ], and India [ 32 ] also found that the exposure of mother to the mass media is associated with stunting.…”

Associated Factors of Wasting among Infants and Young Children (IYC) in Kuyu District, Northern Oromia, Ethiopia

“…The gender of infants and young children and their age are characterized as variables that influence wasting [ 17 , 22 , 23 ]. Wasting is also linked to educational status [ 24 , 25 ], occupational status [ 26 ], family food insufficiency [ 27 , 28 ], and dietary intake [ 21 , 29 , 30 ].…”