A household-based survey of the morbidity profile of under-five children in Port Harcourt Metropolis, Southern Nigeria.

Introduction: the commonest causes of childhood morbidity and deaths are avoidable and curable, and have been well reported in country-wide surveys. This study was conducted to validate the locality-specific childhood morbidity profile among households in urban Port Harcourt Metropolis in the oil-rich South-South Nigeria.

Methods: an observational, cross-sectional survey was conducted involving 806 mother/under-five children pairs that were randomly selected by a modified cluster sampling design. Data were collected using a pre-tested, interviewer-administered structured questionnaire that was adapted from the Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey instrument (2018), which explored information on common causes of morbidity by verbal autopsies. Analysis was done with the Statistical Package for Social Sciences, version 21.

Results: the under-five children were 406 males (50.4%) and 400 females (49.6%) with an average age of 27.7 ± 17.9 months. Fever was the most frequent morbidity, reported in 364 (45.2%, 95% CI = 0.4175-0.4861) of the children, followed by cough in 362 (44.9%, 95%CI = 0.4150-0.4836), fast breathing in 49 (6.1%, 95%CI = 0.0458-0.0789), and diarrhoea in 17 (2.1%, 95%CI = 0.0139-0.0308). Symptoms of fever (chi-square = 31.117, P-value=0.001) and cough (chi-square=21.416, P-value = 0.001), were higher in the 48-59 month age group.

Conclusion: febrile illness, acute respiratory tract infection, and diarrhoea disease were found to be common in under-five children in the metropolitan city of Port Harcourt. Tailored community-based health interventions and surveillance are needed to reduce the frequency of childhood morbidity and prevent mortality in this age group.