Vitamin A supplementation coverage and its associated factors among children aged 6-59 months in West Azernet Berbere Woreda, South West Ethiopia.

BACKGROUND: Vitamin A deficiency is one of the major public health problems in low and middle-income countries including Ethiopia. Despite this fact, little attention was given to routine vitamin A supplementation in hard-to-reach rural areas and districts. Therefore, this study aimed to assess vitamin A supplementation coverage and its associated factors among children aged 6-59 months in West Azernet Berbere woreda, southern Ethiopia, 2021. METHODS: A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted from April to May 2021. A total sample size of 471 study participants was involved in the study area. A simple random sampling technique was used to recruit the study subject. A pretested structured interviewer-administered questionnaire was used. Bivariable and multivariable logistic regression analyses were done to identify variables having a significant association with vitamin A supplementation. The variables having a p-value ≤ 0.05 with 95% CI were used to declare an association between factors and a dependent variable. RESULTS: In this study, a total of 471 respondents were successfully interviewed with a response rate of 97.3%. The coverage of vitamin A supplementation was found to be 58.0%. Family monthly income [AOR = 2.565, 95% CI(1.631,4.032)], having PNC visit [AOR = 1.801, 95% CI (1.158, 2.801)], husbands disapproval about vitamin A supplementation [AOR = 0.324, 95% CI (0.129, 0.813)], information about vitamin A supplementation [AOR = 2.932, 95% CI (1.893, 4,542)] and ANC follow-up [AOR = 1.882, 95% CI (1.084, 3.266)] were factors significantly associated to vitamin A supplementation. CONCLUSION: Vitamin A supplementation was found to be low and it is strongly associated with family monthly income, postnatal care, husband's disapproval of vitamin A supplementation, antenatal care follow-up, and information about vitamin A supplementation. Based on our findings, it is recommended to improve the monthly income of the household by actively engaging in various income-generating activities, enhance health information dissemination among mothers, particularly those who are underprivileged by using different strategies like local health campaigns, and mass media, advocacy of antenatal, and postnatal follow-up and promote the involvement of males/husband in childhood immunization service.

Survival Time to Development of Hypertension and Its Predictors among a Cohort of Diabetic Patients in Health Facilities of Gurage Zone: A Retrospective Follow-Up Study.

BACKGROUND: It is expected that around 50% of individuals with diabetes mellitus will develop hypertension in the course of medical follow-up. However, with strict medical follow-up and adherence to medical advice the incidence of hypertension can be highly reduced and the time to occurrence can be delayed. Therefore, this paper aimed to measure the time to development of hypertension and identify its predictors among a 10-year cohort of diabetic patients who have medical follow-up in health facilities of Gurage Zone. METHODS: An institution-based retrospective cohort study was conducted in diabetic follow-up clinics of Gurage Zone by reviewing 540 consecutively selected records among the records enrolled from January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2019. The outcome variable was incidence rate and survival time to the occurrences of hypertension (a systolic blood pressure at or above 140 mmHg and/or a diastolic blood pressure at or above 90 mm Hg and known hypertensive cases taken from adults' age ≥18 years) among admitted diabetic patients (fasting blood sugar ≥126 mg/dL or random blood sugar ≥200 mg/dL). Data were collected using a standardized checklist by trained professionals by reviewing records of all clients ever enrolled. Data were cleaned and entered by Epi info version 7 and analyzed by STATA. A Cox-proportional hazard regression model was built to identify predictors of development of hypertension. RESULTS: A total of 540 clients were followed for different periods with a median follow-up period of 2.3 years which gives 3,200 person-years of observation. Two hundred and seventy-six (51.1%) participants were males and the mean age of was 52.2 (+11.7) years. Three hundred (55.6%) participants were urban dwellers. The overall incidence density rate (IDR) of hypertension in the cohort was 48.6 cases per 1,000 persons-year. Older ages adjusted hazard ratio (AHR)=4.0 (95% CI=2.26-7.82), body mass index (BMI) >25 kg/m2 AHR=2.3 (95% CI=1.06-3.68), Type II diabetes mellitus (DM) AHR=2.0 (95% CI=1.16-3.04), presence of comorbidity AHR=2.9 (95% CI=1.74-4.58), and poor drug adherence AHR=2.5 (95% CI=1.45-4.65) predicted the development of hypertension. CONCLUSION: The risk of occurrences of hypertension among diabetic patients was high at the early periods and the risk was less at the late diabetic periods and the incidence density rate of hypertension among diabetic patients was high. In addition, age, BMI, type of DM, comorbidity, and drug adherence were independent predictors of occurrences of hypertension. Therefore, intervention to further reduce its occurrence has to focus on drug adherence and prevention of infection.