Spatial co-morbidity of childhood acute respiratory infection, diarrhoea and stunting in Nigeria

In low- and middle-income countries, children aged below 5 years frequently suffer from disease co-occurrence. This study assessed whether the co-occurrence of acute respiratory infection (ARI), diarrhoea and stunting observed at the child level could also be reflected ecologically. We considered disease data on 69,579 children (0–59 months) from the 2008, 2013, and 2018 Nigeria Demographic and Health Surveys using a hierarchical Bayesian spatial shared component model to separate the state-specific risk of each disease into an underlying disease-overall spatial pattern, common to the three diseases and a disease-specific spatial pattern. We found that ARI and stunting were more concentrated in the north-eastern and southern parts of the country, while diarrhoea was much higher in the northern parts. The disease-general spatial component was greater in the northeastern and southern parts of the country. Identifying and reducing common risk factors to the three conditions could result in improved child health, particularly in the northeast and south of Nigeria.DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT : The dataset used in this study are available from the DHS website https://dhsprogram.com/Data/ upon request from the MEASURE DHS program team. Written permission to use the data was obtained from Measure DHS.The South African Medical Research Council.https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerphStatistic

Spatial Co-Morbidity of Childhood Acute Respiratory Infection, Diarrhoea and Stunting in Nigeria

In low- and middle-income countries, children aged below 5 years frequently suffer from disease co-occurrence. This study assessed whether the co-occurrence of acute respiratory infection (ARI), diarrhoea and stunting observed at the child level could also be reflected ecologically. We considered disease data on 69,579 children (0–59 months) from the 2008, 2013, and 2018 Nigeria Demographic and Health Surveys using a hierarchical Bayesian spatial shared component model to separate the state-specific risk of each disease into an underlying disease-overall spatial pattern, common to the three diseases and a disease-specific spatial pattern. We found that ARI and stunting were more concentrated in the north-eastern and southern parts of the country, while diarrhoea was much higher in the northern parts. The disease-general spatial component was greater in the north-eastern and southern parts of the country. Identifying and reducing common risk factors to the three conditions could result in improved child health, particularly in the northeast and south of Nigeria

Geostatistical patterns of comorbidity of diarrhea, acute respiratory infection, and stunting among under-five children in Nigeria

Among children under five in Nigeria, in the year 2018, the prevalence of diarrhea was 13%, that of acute respiratory infections 3%, and that of stunting 37%. A shared-component model highlights geographic variations in the comorbidities of these diseases. The data are from the 2018 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey. The majority of states in northern Nigeria presented clusters of higher risk for comorbidities of any pair of the three diseases. Compared with mothers with primary education or less, mothers with secondary education were 1.4 times less likely to have two or three of these diseases at the same time, and women with tertiary education 2.0 times less. Compared to childless women of the same age, mothers were 1.6 times less when aged 20–29, 1.9 times less when aged 30–39, and 2.0 times less when aged 40–49. Access to a protected water source reduced the risk by a factor of 1.3. Girls under age five were 1.2 times less likely than boys of that age to have two or three of these diseases at the same time. This factor was the same for breastfed children compared to those who were not breastfed