Abstract

Background: Nutritional status of children reflects the overall health status of children. Under nutrition is caused by various factors, most of which relate to poor diet and repeated infections, particularly in poor socioeconomic populations. The few Studies conducted on the association between child malnutrition and household source of drinking water among under five children present inconsistent and inconclusive findings. Therefore, the objective of the current systematic review and meta-analysis was to determine the pooled estimates on the effect of household source of drinking water malnutrition among under five children in Ethiopia.

Methods: Both published and unpublished studies were accessed through electronic search from databases such as, PubMed, Medline, HINARI, Scopes, CINAHL, PopLine, MedNar, Embase, Cochrane library, the JBI Library, the Web of Science and Google Scholar. All observational studies that were conducted on the association between malnutrition and source of drinking water among under five children in Ethiopia were included in the review. The meta-analysis was conducted using STATA version 14 software and results were presented in forest plots. The pooled estimate with 95% confidence intervals were computed using random effect model. We used funnel plot, Egger’s and Begg’s tests at significance level 5% to check the presence of publication bias.

Result: A total of 1009 published and unpublished studies were identified of which 22 studies were included in the final analysis with a total of 12792 under five children. Our analysis found that the source of drinking water had statistically significant effect on the occurrence of malnutrition among under five children. The overall pooled estimate showed that the odds of developing malnutrition among under five children whose household had protected drinking water source was 39% lower than those under five children whose household with unprotected water source (OR: 0.61, 95% CI: 0.44, 0.84).

Conclusion: The systematic review and meta-analysis found statistically significant effect of household source of drinking water on malnutrition, in which children from household who used protected water source for drinking was less likely to develop malnutrition as compared with their counter parts. This finding indicates that the need for increase in the coverage of protected water source and creating awareness on how to treat drinking water at household level particularly in rural household.

Keywords: Malnutrition, under-five, source of water, Ethiopia.