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Determinants of childhood stunting in the Democratic Republic of Congo: further analysis of Demographic and Health Survey 2013–14
BACKGROUND: Prevalence of child stunting in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is among the highest in the world. There is a need to systematically investigate how stunting operates at different levels of determination and identify major factors contributing to the development of stunting. The a...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5540220/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28764669 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4621-0 |
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author | Kismul, Hallgeir Acharya, Pawan Mapatano, Mala Ali Hatløy, Anne |
author_facet | Kismul, Hallgeir Acharya, Pawan Mapatano, Mala Ali Hatløy, Anne |
author_sort | Kismul, Hallgeir |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Prevalence of child stunting in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is among the highest in the world. There is a need to systematically investigate how stunting operates at different levels of determination and identify major factors contributing to the development of stunting. The aim of this study was to look for key determinants of stunting in the DRC. METHODS: This study used data from the DRC Demographic Health Survey 2013–14 which included anthropometric measurement for 9030 under 5 year children. Height-for-Age Z score was calculated and classified according to the WHO guideline. The association between stunting and bio-demographic characteristics was assessed using logistic regression. RESULTS: Prevalence of stunting was much higher in boys than girls. There was a significant rural urban gap in the prevalence of stunting with rural areas having a larger proportion of children living with stunting than urban. Male children, older than 6 months, preceding birth interval less than 24 months, being from lower wealth quintiles had the highest odds of stunting. Several provinces had in particular high odds of stunting. Early initiation of breastfeeding, mother’s age more than 20 years at the time of delivery had lower odds of stunting. The taller the mother the less likely the child was to be stunted. Similarly, mother’s BMI, access to safe water, access to hygienic toilet, mother’s education were found negatively correlated with child stunting in the bivariate logistic regression, but they lost statistical significance in multivariate analysis together with numbers of children in the family and place of residence. CONCLUSIONS: Child stunting is widespread in the DRC and increasing prevalence is worrisome. This study has identified modifiable factors determining high prevalence of stunting in the DRC. Policy implementation should in particular target provinces with high prevalence of stunting and address modifiable determinants such as reducing socioeconomic disparity. Nutrition promotion intervention, including early initiation of breastfeeding should be an immediate priority. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-017-4621-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5540220 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-55402202017-08-03 Determinants of childhood stunting in the Democratic Republic of Congo: further analysis of Demographic and Health Survey 2013–14 Kismul, Hallgeir Acharya, Pawan Mapatano, Mala Ali Hatløy, Anne BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Prevalence of child stunting in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is among the highest in the world. There is a need to systematically investigate how stunting operates at different levels of determination and identify major factors contributing to the development of stunting. The aim of this study was to look for key determinants of stunting in the DRC. METHODS: This study used data from the DRC Demographic Health Survey 2013–14 which included anthropometric measurement for 9030 under 5 year children. Height-for-Age Z score was calculated and classified according to the WHO guideline. The association between stunting and bio-demographic characteristics was assessed using logistic regression. RESULTS: Prevalence of stunting was much higher in boys than girls. There was a significant rural urban gap in the prevalence of stunting with rural areas having a larger proportion of children living with stunting than urban. Male children, older than 6 months, preceding birth interval less than 24 months, being from lower wealth quintiles had the highest odds of stunting. Several provinces had in particular high odds of stunting. Early initiation of breastfeeding, mother’s age more than 20 years at the time of delivery had lower odds of stunting. The taller the mother the less likely the child was to be stunted. Similarly, mother’s BMI, access to safe water, access to hygienic toilet, mother’s education were found negatively correlated with child stunting in the bivariate logistic regression, but they lost statistical significance in multivariate analysis together with numbers of children in the family and place of residence. CONCLUSIONS: Child stunting is widespread in the DRC and increasing prevalence is worrisome. This study has identified modifiable factors determining high prevalence of stunting in the DRC. Policy implementation should in particular target provinces with high prevalence of stunting and address modifiable determinants such as reducing socioeconomic disparity. Nutrition promotion intervention, including early initiation of breastfeeding should be an immediate priority. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-017-4621-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2017-08-01 /pmc/articles/PMC5540220/ /pubmed/28764669 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4621-0 Text en © The Author(s). 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Kismul, Hallgeir Acharya, Pawan Mapatano, Mala Ali Hatløy, Anne Determinants of childhood stunting in the Democratic Republic of Congo: further analysis of Demographic and Health Survey 2013–14 |
title | Determinants of childhood stunting in the Democratic Republic of Congo: further analysis of Demographic and Health Survey 2013–14 |
title_full | Determinants of childhood stunting in the Democratic Republic of Congo: further analysis of Demographic and Health Survey 2013–14 |
title_fullStr | Determinants of childhood stunting in the Democratic Republic of Congo: further analysis of Demographic and Health Survey 2013–14 |
title_full_unstemmed | Determinants of childhood stunting in the Democratic Republic of Congo: further analysis of Demographic and Health Survey 2013–14 |
title_short | Determinants of childhood stunting in the Democratic Republic of Congo: further analysis of Demographic and Health Survey 2013–14 |
title_sort | determinants of childhood stunting in the democratic republic of congo: further analysis of demographic and health survey 2013–14 |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5540220/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28764669 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4621-0 |
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