Abstract

Background: Under five malnutrition continue to be one of the leading public health problems worldwide, especially in developing countries. The finding of a few studies conducted on the association between malnutrition and latrine availability among under-five children in Ethiopia presented inconsistent finding. Therefore, the objective of the current systematic review and meta-analysis was to determine the pooled estimate on the association between child malnutrition and latrine availability among under-five children in Ethiopia.

Methods: We accessed both published and unpublished studies through electronic search from databases such as Medline, Hinari, Scopes,PubMed CINAHL, PopLine, MedNar, Embase, Cochrane library, the JBI Library, the Web of Science and Google Scholar. We included all observational studies that were conducted on the association between malnutrition and latrine availability among under-five children in Ethiopia. The data entry and analysis were conducted using the STATA 14.1 version. A random effects model was used to estimate the pooled estimate with a 95% confidence interval(CI). Forest plots were used to visualize the presence of heterogeneity. Funnel plots and Egger’s and Begg’s tests were used to check for publication bias.

Results: A total 1610 published and unpublished studies were identified of which sixteen of them fulfilled inclusion criteria and included in the meta-analysis. The overall pooled estimate indicates the odds of developing malnutrition among children from households who had latrine was 38 percent or lower as compared with those children from the household who had no latrine (OR: 0.62, 95% CI: 0.49, 0.77).

Conclusion: The systematic review and meta-analysis found a statistically significant association between child malnutrition and household latrine availability among under-five children in Ethiopia, in which odds of developing malnutrition was lower among children from the household who had latrine compared to children from the household who had no latrine. These findings indicate that the need to work to increase latrine coverage and strengthen the education on the appropriate latrine utilization. In addition, the findings indicate the importance of culture- and context-specific latrine preparation and latrine utilization education.

Keywords: Malnutrition, under-five, latrine availability, Ethiopia.