FIVE YEAR TREND OF SEVERE ACUTE MALNUTRITION IN UNDER FIVE YEARS OLD CHILDREN IN RELATION TO METEOROLOGICAL PATTERN IN FEDIS DISTRICT OF EAST HARARGHE ZONE, ETHIOPIA: INSTITUTIONAL RECORD BASED STUDY

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.