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Determinants of Multi-morbidity of Infectious Diseases Among Under-five Children of Bangladesh: Role of Community Context

Rashmi Rashmi, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)
Ronak Paul, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

In last few decades, presence of more than one morbid condition among children has become the global concern. Diarrhea and respiratory tract infections including fever, cough, and breathing problems are some common diseases that are prevalent across Bangladeshi children. Despite the knowledge of determinants, community level factors are often overlooked while understanding multi-morbidity of infectious disease in children. Present study explores how community can affect the multi-morbidity of infectious diseases in under-five children. Moreover, most of the past studies have used multinomial models to examine the multi-morbidity in children, but our study uses count model. So, we used mixed-effects random-intercept Poisson regression models to understand the determinants of multi-morbidity of infectious diseases in under-five Bangladeshi children considering the community level characteristics. The morbidity information from the most recent Demographic and Health Survey of Bangladesh conducted during 2017-18 were combined to make a count variable of morbidity status. Further, the multivariate association of morbidity status of children with the explanatory variables was shown using incidence rate ratios. Among 8,398 Bangladeshi children, acute respiratory infections are more common than diarrhea. Along with other determinants, community level factors are expected to be an important indicator of multi-morbidity of infectious disease in Bangladesh.

Keywords: Health and morbidity, Multi-level modeling, Children and youth

See extended abstract.

  Presented in Session P5.