Malnutrition and Comorbidities among Children Under Five Years in SOS Hospital Mogadishu, Somalia

Abstract

Malnutrition is defined as a lack of proper nutrition. The vast majority of the world’s hungry people live in developing countries, where 12.9% of the population are undernourished. It is prevalent in children particularly those in developing countries where one person out every four there is undernourished. Mortality is related to the severity of the malnutrition. In Somalia, child malnutrition remains a major health problem where the proportion of under-five children who were underweight in 2013 was 40% and 21% in rural and urban areas respectively. The purpose of this study was to investigate malnutrition and comorbidities among children under five years in SOS Hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia. The study employed a cross-sectional hospital survey targeting a population of under five children who were diagnosed as malnutrition cases at SOS Hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia. Probability systematic random sampling was used to obtain a sample size of 384 malnourished children. Data was collected from caregivers of malnourished children by use of a structured questionnaire and also review of patients’ medical records. Data collected was analyzed using SPSS software (version 20.0) to describe and identify significant associations between different variables. Descriptive summary statistics and graphical summaries in tables and charts were used to present the study findings. The most prevalent forms of malnutrition among children admitted to SOS Hospital were marasmus (52.6%) and underweight (43.0%). Key study findings revealed are: poor household income (P-value = 0.000); large household size (P-value = 0.002); counselling of the caregiver/mother on healthy eating (P-value = 0.004); age of child (P-value = 0.001); vitamin A supplementation (P-value = 0.048); age up-to when the child was breastfed (P-value = 0.001); type of the milk the baby is fed on particularly Cows milk (P-value = 0.012) with most significant and positively related comorbidities among the malnourished children admitted to SOS hospital were urinary tract infection (P-value = 0.032, which was significant at 5% level of confidence), bronchopneumonia (P-value = 0.007, which was significant at 5% level of confidence), measles (P-value = 0.006, which was significant at 5% level of confidence) and malaria (P-value = 0.005, which was significant at 5% level of confidence) and based on the above findings, the following conclusion and recommendations were made: caregivers need to improve their poor household income through creating a good daily income source for them; encouraging mothers to practice birth control methods by to regulate their birth rates and thus the large household size; community-based counseling of the mother/caregiver on healthy eating and food fortification should be established and implemented at all community levels; supplementation of vitamins particularly vitamin A and other essential vitamins should be offered to all under five children; encouraging mothers to breastfed their children particularly first 6 months and avoiding Cow’s milk supplementation to their babies in the first year; early detection and treatment of infections in under five children like urinary tract infection, bronchopneumonia, measles and malaria.