Determinants of Severe Acute Malnutrition among Under Five Children in Shashogo Woreda, Southern Ethiopia: A Community Based Matched Case Control Study

Background – Severe acute malnutrition is one of the major killers of under five children in developing countries including Ethiopia. However, little information is known about the determinant factors of severe acute malnutrition, which is obtained from hospital based studies is available. Hence this study was aimed to identify the determinants of severe acute malnutrition in Shashogo woreda, Southern Ethiopia. Methods – An age matched community based case control study was conducted from February 20 to march 30, 2014 in 12 randomly selected rural kebeles of the Shashogo district, southern Ethiopia. The cases were 108 severely malnourished (wt/ht < 70%) children under the age of five and the controls (n=108) were children without malnutrition recruited concurrently from under five children of the same kebele. Data was collected by face to face interview and anthropometric measurements of the children was taken using standard procedures. Descriptive and summary statistics was done. Bivariate and multivariate analysis was done using conditional logistic regression on SPSS version 20.0 and Epi info version 7 software in order to determine factors associated with severe acute malnutrition.