Application of a count regression model to identify the risk factors of under-five child morbidity in Bangladesh.

Background: Bangladesh has seen a significant decline in child mortality in recent decades, but morbidity among children <5 y of age remains high. The aim of this analysis was to examine trends and identify risk factors related to child morbidity in Bangladesh.

Methods: This analysis is based on data from four successive cross-sectional Bangladesh Demographic and Health Surveys for the years 2007, 2011, 2014 and 2017-18. Several count regression models were fitted and the best model was used to identify risk factors associated with morbidity in children <5 y of age.

Results: According to the results of the trend analysis, the prevalence of non-symptomatic children increased and the prevalence of fever, diarrhoea and acute respiratory infections (ARIs) decreased over the years. The Vuong's non-nested test indicated that Poisson regression could be used as the best model. From the results of the Poisson regression model, child age, sex, underweight, wasted, stunting, maternal education, wealth status, religion and region were the important determinants associated with the risk of child morbidity. The risk was considerably higher among women with a primary education compared with women with a secondary or greater education in Bangladesh.

Conclusions: This analysis concluded that child morbidity is still a major public health problem for Bangladesh. Thus it is important to take the necessary measures to reduce child morbidity (particularly fever, diarrhoea and ARI) by improving significant influencing factors.