PREVELENCE OF SEVERE ACUTE MALNUTRITION AMONG UNDER FIVE CHILDREN IN BANADIR HOSPITALMOGADISHU, SOMALIA

ABSTRACT Young children and newborns are especially more susceptible to malnutrition because of their high dietarydemands for growth and development. Many child survival programs by the Somalia Government, bilateral agencies and non-governmental are working with communities to alleviate child malnutrition. However, the prevalence of child malnutrition continues to be high. This study was carried out to determine the nutritional status of children under the age of five years and associated risk factors at Banadir hospital, Mogadishu,Somalia. The study was conducted at Banadir hospital which is located in Mogadishu, Somalia between January and February 2021. A cross sectional study design was utilized to assess the nutrition status of children under fiveyears and its association with demographic and socio-economic characteristics, water availability, hygiene and sanitation. Caregivers who were present in the hospital provided answersto research interviewers on Open data kit (ODK). The targeted 236 respondents randomly sampled were recruited into the study. The respondents were mothers/caregivers of children between the age of 6-59 months. Anthropometry data from the survey wasanalyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and Emergency Nutrition Assessment (ENA)software’s. Analysis involved interpreting statistical software outputs to draw objective oriented conclusions. Socio-demographic and socio-economic characteristics, morbidity, and immunization characteristics were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequencies. Chi-square tests were used to define the associations between variables. while the nutritional status was analyzed with the Emergency Nutrition Assessment (ENA) for SMART (version 2012. ANOVA was used to analyze the physical growth of the children. Half of the respondents (52%) were females while men accounted for 48% of the responses with an average age of 27 years. Majority of the respondents (22%) had completed secondary school education with those who did not attend school accounting for the least percentage of 2.1%. The study established that self-employment was the main source of income for households with a prevalence of 34.1%. Salaried employmentcame second with 30.1% while farming was the least income generating activity with 3.2%. The averagehousehold size reported was six with the highest number being 12. The minimum number of occupants in a single household to be recorded was two. Majority of the study population depended on tap water (95.8%),while only a few households used rain water (0.4%). To purify water for consumption, 28% of the residents used chemicals to treat water, 7.6% used traditional herbs to make drinking water safe for consumption. About11.9% boiled water while the remaining 5.1% attain safety of the drinking water through sieving and filtering. A substantial percentage (70%) of the households in Banadir used flash toilets.Ventilated improved latrines was utilized by 21% of the residents while 9% used traditional pit latrines as their toiletfacility.