WORLD JOURNAL OF ADVANCE
HEALTHCARE RESEARCH

Tesfaledet Tsegay Mena*

ABSTRACT

Acute respiratory tract infection (ARI) is considered as one of the major public health problems and it?s recognized as the leading cause of mortality and morbidity in many developing countries. The greatest problem for developing countries is mortality from ARI in children less than five years of age. This study is an attempt to identify socio-economic, demographic, health, environmental and nutritional related predictors of ARI among under-five children in Ethiopia. In this study the data source is Ethiopian Demographic and Health survey (EDHS, 2011) conducted by Central Statistics Agency (CSA). From the sampled children, the two weeks prevalence of ARI among under-five children was about 12.3% in Ethiopia. The result of the analysis showed that fuel used for cooking, current age of the child, received vitamin A recently, underweight, wasting, region, had Diarrhea recently, number of under five children, mother currently working and household wealth index are significant risk factors of under five children in Ethiopia. The multilevel analysis showed that the variance of the random component related to the intercept term was found to be statistically significant implying difference in prevalence of ARI among the regions. It also found that fuel used for cooking, current age of the child, received vitamin A recently, underweight, wasting, region, had Diharria recently, number of under five children, mother currently working and household wealth index were significant determinant of variations of prevalence of ARI among regions. However, the significant predictors did not show underlying variation from region to region.