Environmental health factors associated with diarrhoeal diseases among underfive children in the Sebeta town of Ethiopia

The aim of this study was to assess and explore household environmental health factors associated with the occurrence of diarrhoea experienced by children under five years of age in Sebeta town of Ethiopia. A cross-sectional study, using stratified random sampling was used to conduct the research. A total of 477 households’ mothers/caregivers had participated in the study. The study showed that the prevalence of childhood diarrhoea was 9.9%. A number of risk factors including demographic variables, water and hygienic practices, and knowledge of risk factors showed significant association with childhood diarrhoea on bivariate analysis. The multivariate analysis showed that four variables were protective factors for childhood diarrhoea, including the type of toilet facility (AOR: 0.37; 95% CI 0.16 – 0.87; p = 0.023), availability of specific hand-washing places (AOR: 0.40; 95% CI 0.18 – 0.90; p = 0.026), availability of hand-washing facilities (AOR: 0.20; 95% CI 0.06 – 0.70; p = 0.012) and mothers’ knowledge on diarrhoea causation (AOR: 3.09; 95% CI 1.24 – 7.68; p = 0.015). The study, thus, recommends that effective measures to curtail prevalence of diarrhoea in urban contexts should be substantially increased by enhancing protective factors such as urban sanitation promotion programmes with emphasis on accelerating universal access to improved sanitation and hand-washing facilities, together with efforts in promoting proper hygiene behaviours.