Determining factors associated with cholera disease in Ethiopia using Bayesian hierarchical modeling

BACKGROUND: Cholera is a diarrheal disease caused by infection of the intestine with the gram-negative bacteria Vibrio cholera. It is caused by the ingestion of food or water and infected all age groups. This study aimed at identifying risk factors associated with cholera disease in Ethiopia using the Bayesian hierarchical model. METHODS: The study was conducted in Ethiopia across regions and this study used secondary data obtained from the Ethiopian public health institute. Latent Gaussian models were used in this study; which is a group of models that contains most statistical models used in practice. The posterior marginal distribution of the Latent Gaussian models with different priors is determined by R-Integrated Nested Laplace Approximation. RESULTS: There were 2790 cholera patients in Ethiopia across the regions. There were 81.61% of patients are survived from cholera outbreak disease and the rest 18.39% have died. There was 39% variation across the region in Ethiopia. Latent Gaussian models including random and fixed effects with standard priors were the best model to fit the data based on deviance. The odds of surviving from cholera outbreak disease for inpatient status are 0.609 times less than the outpatient status. CONCLUSIONS: The authors conclude that the fitted latent Gaussian models indicate the predictor variables; admission status, aged between 15 and 44, another sick person in a family, dehydration status, oral rehydration salt, intravenous, and antibiotics were significantly associated with cholera outbreak disease. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-022-14153-1.