Environmental Risk Factors Influencing Diarrheal Occurrence among Children Under Five Years Old in Informal Urban Settlements: A Case Study of Korogocho, in Nairobi County, Kenya
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Date
2020-09Author
Ikua, Muriithi D
Obwa, Wakajummah J
Kennedy, Japhan O
Type
ArticleLanguage
enMetadata
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The paper's main objective is to establish the relationship between environmental risk factors of childhood diarrhea
and its occurrence in the Korogocho slum in Nairobi County. The hypotheses to be tested were; no significant
relationship between environment and external risk factors and contraction of childhood diarrhea for those younger
than five years in the Korogocho slum. The study variables included treatment of and sources drinking water, type of
and cleanliness of toilet facilities, and accessibility. Self-reporting and two-week recall was the data collection strategy
adopted for diarrhea outcome and its determinants. The selection of households for respondents (mothers of the target
population) used systematic random sampling. Every third household with a child below five years of age was
selected. When there was no child in the third household, the researcher went to the next one with a child's mother
below five years until the study achieved a sample size of 90 respondents. Data was collected using well designed
open-ended questionnaires, and analysis used descriptive and chi-square statistics. Findings showed that community
and household environmental factors positively impacted diarrhea for the target population in the Korogocho slum.
However, access to and sharing toilet facilities were not statistically significant in contracting diarrhea for the sample
group. Based on two weeks recall, 36.4% of mothers reported that their children within the age limit had contracted
diarrhea. Based on the results, the study identified several recommendations and suggested areas for further research.
The key recommendations are to institutionalize deliberate interventions to provide slum dwellers with clean and
quality drinking water and proper sanitation facilities to ensure the safe and effective fecal waste disposal.
Keywords: Diarrhea morbidity and occurrence, Infant mortality rate, Environmental risk factors, Informal urban
settlement, Access to sanitation, Access to water, Diarrhea pathogens, Household.
Copyright @ 2021: This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license which permits unrestricted
use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium for non-commercial use (NonCommercial, or CC-BY-NC) provided the original author and source
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https://saspublishers.com/media/articles/SJAHSS_91_19-30.pdfhttp://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke/handle/11295/155270
Citation
10.36347/sjahss.2021.v09i01.005Publisher
University of Nairobi
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United StatesUsage Rights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/Collections
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