Assessing the influence of socioeconomic and environmental variables on malaria risk in Nigerian children under 5 years: a GLMM approach.

Abstract

Background: The study focused on the full population of children from Nigeria, where the dataset was obtained from the demographic and health surveys (DHS). About 10245 children were selected for the current study and based on the rapid diagnostic test (RDT) results, there is about 37% prevalence of malaria in children under 5 years old in Nigeria. Malaria is the leading public health concern, that contributes to child mortality in the African region.

Methods: The Nigeria Malaria Indicator Survey (NMIS) 2021 was utilized in this investigation. For the 2021 NMIS, a two-stage sampling technique was used. According to the NIMS study, the children chosen for anaemia and RDT testing were under 5 years of age.

Results: A generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) was used to examine malaria RDT findings in conjunction with demographic, geographic, and socioeconomic characteristics. The following underlying risk factors for malaria in children were discovered in the study: altitude, anaemia level, age in months, fever status in the past 2 weeks, toilet facility, main wall material, main roof material, household wealth index, type of place of residence, sex of the child, mother's education level, and knowledge of the preventative measures that can be used to prevent malaria.

Conclusion: Missing data were not deleted in this investigation; instead, multiple imputations utilizing chained equations were used to approximate the missing observation. Based on the results found by using the GLMM, the findings of this study may influence how the government combats malaria in Nigeria. The novelty of this study is that the missing values were not dropped. However, imputation techniques were explored, and multiple imputation by chained equations was used.