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An investigation of district spatial variations of childhood diarrhoea and fever morbidity in Malawi

Although diarrhoea and malaria are among the leading causes of child mortality and morbidity in Sub-Saharan Africa, few detailed studies have examined the patterns and determinants of these ailments in the most affected communities. In this paper, we investigate the spatial distribution of observed...

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Autores principales: Kandala, Ngianga-Bakwin, Magadi, Monica Akinyi, Madise, Nyovani Janet
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier Ltd. 2006
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7126797/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16139938
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2005.07.028
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author Kandala, Ngianga-Bakwin
Magadi, Monica Akinyi
Madise, Nyovani Janet
author_facet Kandala, Ngianga-Bakwin
Magadi, Monica Akinyi
Madise, Nyovani Janet
author_sort Kandala, Ngianga-Bakwin
collection PubMed
description Although diarrhoea and malaria are among the leading causes of child mortality and morbidity in Sub-Saharan Africa, few detailed studies have examined the patterns and determinants of these ailments in the most affected communities. In this paper, we investigate the spatial distribution of observed diarrhoea and fever prevalence in Malawi using individual data for 10,185 children from the 2000 Malawi Demographic and Health survey. We highlight inequalities in child health by mapping the residual district spatial effects using a geo-additive probit model that simultaneously controls for spatial dependence in the data and potential nonlinear effects of covariates. The residual spatial effects were modelled via a Bayesian approach. For both ailments, we were able to identify a distinct district pattern of childhood morbidity. In particular, the results suggest that children living in the capital city are less affected by fever, although this is not true for diarrhoea, where some urban agglomerations are associated with a higher childhood morbidity risk. The spatial patterns emphasize the role of remoteness as well as climatic, environmental, and geographic factors on morbidity. The fixed effects show that for diarrhoea, the risk of child morbidity appears to be lower among infants who are exclusively breastfed than among those who are mixed-fed. However, exclusive breastfeeding was not found to have a protective effect on fever. An important socio-economic factor for both diarrhoea and fever morbidity was parental education, especially maternal educational attainment. Diarrhoea and fever were both observed to show an interesting association with child's age. We were able to discern the continuous worsening of the child morbidity up to 8–12 months of age. This deterioration set in right after birth and continues, more or less linearly until 8–12 months, before beginning to decline thereafter. Independent of other factors, a separate spatial process produces district inequalities in child's health.
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spelling pubmed-71267972020-04-08 An investigation of district spatial variations of childhood diarrhoea and fever morbidity in Malawi Kandala, Ngianga-Bakwin Magadi, Monica Akinyi Madise, Nyovani Janet Soc Sci Med Article Although diarrhoea and malaria are among the leading causes of child mortality and morbidity in Sub-Saharan Africa, few detailed studies have examined the patterns and determinants of these ailments in the most affected communities. In this paper, we investigate the spatial distribution of observed diarrhoea and fever prevalence in Malawi using individual data for 10,185 children from the 2000 Malawi Demographic and Health survey. We highlight inequalities in child health by mapping the residual district spatial effects using a geo-additive probit model that simultaneously controls for spatial dependence in the data and potential nonlinear effects of covariates. The residual spatial effects were modelled via a Bayesian approach. For both ailments, we were able to identify a distinct district pattern of childhood morbidity. In particular, the results suggest that children living in the capital city are less affected by fever, although this is not true for diarrhoea, where some urban agglomerations are associated with a higher childhood morbidity risk. The spatial patterns emphasize the role of remoteness as well as climatic, environmental, and geographic factors on morbidity. The fixed effects show that for diarrhoea, the risk of child morbidity appears to be lower among infants who are exclusively breastfed than among those who are mixed-fed. However, exclusive breastfeeding was not found to have a protective effect on fever. An important socio-economic factor for both diarrhoea and fever morbidity was parental education, especially maternal educational attainment. Diarrhoea and fever were both observed to show an interesting association with child's age. We were able to discern the continuous worsening of the child morbidity up to 8–12 months of age. This deterioration set in right after birth and continues, more or less linearly until 8–12 months, before beginning to decline thereafter. Independent of other factors, a separate spatial process produces district inequalities in child's health. Elsevier Ltd. 2006-03 2005-09-01 /pmc/articles/PMC7126797/ /pubmed/16139938 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2005.07.028 Text en Copyright © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Kandala, Ngianga-Bakwin
Magadi, Monica Akinyi
Madise, Nyovani Janet
An investigation of district spatial variations of childhood diarrhoea and fever morbidity in Malawi
title An investigation of district spatial variations of childhood diarrhoea and fever morbidity in Malawi
title_full An investigation of district spatial variations of childhood diarrhoea and fever morbidity in Malawi
title_fullStr An investigation of district spatial variations of childhood diarrhoea and fever morbidity in Malawi
title_full_unstemmed An investigation of district spatial variations of childhood diarrhoea and fever morbidity in Malawi
title_short An investigation of district spatial variations of childhood diarrhoea and fever morbidity in Malawi
title_sort investigation of district spatial variations of childhood diarrhoea and fever morbidity in malawi
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7126797/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16139938
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2005.07.028
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