Abstract:
Introduction: - Globally about 25 to 35 million under-five children have severe acute
malnutrition. Ethiopia was the seventh wasting burden country from the ten most affected
countries. Though Fedis district of East Hararghe zone is one of the hotspot districts for
severe acute malnutrition, there were scarcities of information on co trend analysis with
meteorological pattern in the district.
Objective: - To assess the trend of five year severe acute malnutrition in under-five years
old children and Meteorological pattern of Fedis district from June 1-30, 2017.
Method: - Institutional record review based cross-sectional design over five years (July
8, 2011- July 7, 2016) was conducted at Fedis district Health office and Fedis agricultural
experiment station. Sixty monthly severe acute malnutrition cases and Meteorological
data over five year were included for trend and Correlation analysis. SPSS was used for
trend and correlation analysis at 95% CI, 0.05 P - Value, by using one way Anova.
Result: The mean annual severe acute malnutrition cases in Fedis district was 3435.
Summer season had the highest significant difference of mean monthly SAM cases
compared to spring and winter season at p value of 0.0001; 199 and 148. In 2016 severe
acute malnutrition show an increment of 49.4 % and 47.7 % compared to 2012 and 2013
years respectively but not significant mean monthly difference at p-value of 0.05. Mean
monthly Rainfall, mean monthly maximum and minimum temperature difference over
the study period shows only variation but all were not significant at p-value of 0.05.
Monthly Severe acute malnutrition had significant positive correlation with monthly total
rainfall (r = 0.35, P- Value=0.0001) and monthly low temperature (r = 0.49 P –Value
0.0001).
Conclusion and recommendation: - The district didn‟t get an enough single seasonal
rainfall considered to be enough for crops growing which made severe acute malnutrition
cases were an entire year problem and it reaches its highest peak in summer season of
each year.. For this the agricultural office of the district and Health office should
advocate to plant backyard grown vegetables in addition to adopting crops to reduce
summer and yearly increment of cases at all level by advancing the study in the future.
