Diarrhoea among Children Under Five Years of Age Residing in a Village Development Committee: A Descriptive Cross-sectional Study

Abstract

Introduction: Diarrhoea is an important cause of morbidity and mortality among young children. It is reported that a large number of under five-year children still die of diarrhoea in Nepal. Nepal is striving for reducing childhood mortality by two thirds. The aim of this study is to find out the prevalence of diarrhoea among children under five years of age in a village development committee.

Methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional study performed among 356 children below 5 years of age residing in the Village Development Committee between January, 2018 and December, 2018 after getting ethical approval from the Institutional Review Committee (Reference number: 209/2017). A semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect the demographic data and other pertinent information. Convenience sampling was done. The data were entered into Microsoft Excel version 16.0 and analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 23.0. Point estimate at 95% Confidence Interval was calculated along with frequency and proportion for binary data and mean with standard deviation for continuous data.

Results: Out of 356 children less than five years of age, diarrhoea was prevalent in 156 (43.82%) (38.67-48.97 at 95% Confidence Interval). Eighty-six (55.12%) were males and 70 (44.87%) were females.

Conclusions: The prevalence of diarrhoea in our study was higher when compared to similar studies conducted in similar settings.