Acute respiratory infection in early childhoo, case study and controls, Suaza 2011

Abstract

Acute respiratory infection (ARI) is within the five leading causes of morbidity in early childhood in the town of Suaza, Huila. Despite efforts in public health aim at protecting the mother and the child have been made, there is not a statistically significant decrease in the incidence of the disease. In order to establish the factors associated with the disease outbreak, it was conducted a case study and prospective controls between march and april, 2011. The cases were children under five years old with ARI diagnosis as stipulated in the protocol for public health surveillance for ARI and ICD- 10 criteria; controls were children without ARI diagnosis, in the same age group, neighbors of the cases. 176 children under five years old were studied, (88 cases and 88 controls). It was found higher incidence of the disease in rural areas. There were no risk factors associated with ARI, and contrary to expectations, the following were found as protective factors: income below the legal minimum wage (OR = 0.49, 95% CI 0.24 to 0.97, chi = 4.24, P = 0.039), and low infant weight at birth (OR = 0.48, 95% CI 0.26 to 0.87, chi = 5.87, P = 0.01). Although there were no found risk factors for the disease outbreak, there is no assurance of their absence, so further longer studies with a bigger sample size are required.