An epidemiological understanding of acute respiratory infection among Indian children

Shahina Begum, All India Institute of Medical Sciences
Sada Nand Dwivedi, All India Institute of Medical Sciences
Arvind Pandey, Institute for Research in Medical Statistics (ICMR)

The problem of acute respiratory infection(ARI) is a well known phenomenon in India. The present analysis uses the National Family Health Survey data(1998-99)collected in India. The ARI means cough with rapid breathing in the last two weeks preceding the interview. The considered covariates were:age and sex of child,birth order, residence, mother's education, religion, caste/tribe, mother's working, father's education, standard of living index, mass media exposure, drinking water. Logistic regression analysis includes univariate and multivariate considerations providing unadjusted and adjusted odds ratio with its 95% confidence interval respectively. Those were more likely to suffer from ARI who had age below two years, rural background, mothers below high school education, muslim community, schedule tribe, fathers with education below middle school, and source of drinking water from other sources excluding piped water or handpump. This again emphasizes long pending need of improvement in education specially of mothers and awareness about public health/family-welfare programs.