Trends of Stunting Prevalence and Its Associated Factors among Nigerian Children Aged 0-59 Months Residing in the Northern Nigeria, 2008-2018

Abstract

Every year in Nigeria, malnutrition contributes to more than 33% of the deaths of childrenbelow 5 years, and these deaths mostly occur in the northern geopolitical zones (NGZs), wherenearly 50% of all children below 5 years are stunted. This study examined the trends in the preva-lence of stunting and its associated factors among children aged 0–23 months, 24–59 months and0–59 monthsin the NGZs. The data of 33,682 recent live births in the NGZs, extracted from theNigeria Demographic and Health Surveys from 2008 to 2018, were used to investigate the factorsassociated with stunting using multilevel logistic regression. Children aged 24–59 months reportedthe highest prevalence of stunting, with 53.3% (95% confidence interval: 2.0–54.6%). Multivariableanalyses revealed four common factors that increased the odds of a child’s stunting across all agesubgroups: poor households, geopolitical zone (northwest or northeast), being a male and maternalheight(<145 cm).Interventional strategies focused on poverty mitigation through cash transfer andeducating low socioeconomic mothers on the benefits of gender-neutral supplementary feeding andthe timely monitoring of the offspring of short mothers would substantially reduce stunting acrossall age subgroups in the NGZs.