Impact of Tungiasis on school age children in Muranga county, Kenya.
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Date
2015Author
Ngunjiri, Josephine W
Type
ThesisLanguage
enMetadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Background: Tungiasis is a parasitic tropical disease caused by female Tunga penetrans
which causes different health disabilities. The objective of this study was to estimate the
burden of disease and find out the impact of Tungiasis on acquisition of basic education
among children aged 5 to 14 years. This was done by quantifying loss of health caused by the
disease using Disability Adjusted Life Years metric and also determining the influence of
disabilities caused by Tungiasis on children school absenteeism and retention.
Methodology: A cross-sectional descriptive research design in which 200 households were
systematically randomly selected. From each household a maximum of two children aged 5-
14 years were recruited adding to a total of 384 children. Data on mortality were collected
through verbal autopsy and desk top review of medical records. Morbidity was determined by
physical examination of the children and sequelae reported by the children, parents and
teachers. Primary and secondary data were collected through questionnaires, interviews,
observations and desk review. School attendance was determined from the attendance
registers. Data analysis was carried out using Statistical Package for Social Sciences version
21 software. Correlations and regression tests, Wald chi square test were carried out in
addition to descriptive statistics.
Results: A total of 347 children aged between 5-14 years participated in the study.
Prevalence of Tungiasis at household level was 37% (74 households) while among children
the prevalence was 44 % (153). It was shown that children who were aged below 11 years
who had a prevalence of 37% were more vulnerable to Tungiasis at p= 0.048. A total of 0.3
Disability Adjusted live years were lost due to Mild Tungiasis while 2.51 Disability Adjusted
Life Years were lost due to severe Tungiasis. There was zero mortality due to Tungiasis
among the children aged 5-14 years. This study found that children suffering from Tungiasis
were likely to repeat same class even more than one time (p= 0.007). Tungiasis status was
xv
found to influence negatively the ability of children to attend school at p= 0.001. Severe
Tungiasis caused greater loss of health 8.4 times more than loss of health resulting from mild
condition of the disease.
Conclusion: Tungiasis is highly prevalent among the children aged between 5-14 years in
endemic areas. Acquisition of basic education can be improved by addressing and managing
Tungiasis which would promote school attendance and retention. In order to reduce burden of
disease caused by Tungiasis the health care providers should adopt effective and sustainable
disease management measures.
Publisher
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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