Spatial Analysis of Household Cooking Fuel as One of the Determinants of Child Health Outcome and Survival in Nigeria

Sunday Abatan, Federal University Oye

This study investigates the influence of household cooking fuel on child health outcomes in Nigeria, using data from the 2018 Nigeria Demographic and Health Surveys (NDHS). The study population included 32,268 children, either alive or deceased. The data analysis employed STATA 17.0 and QGIS software to run the descriptive statistics, spatial analysis, and Cox-proportional hazard models. According to the study, childhood death rates vary significantly depending on the type of cooking fuel used. Mothers who use air-polluting cooking-fuel have a higher proportion of poor child health-outcomes than those who use clean fuel: stunted children 39.8% versus 15.1%, wasted children 23.5% versus 9.9%, infant-mortality 6.7% versus 4.7%. The infants who reside in the states where the proportion clean-cooking fuel is low are found to be associated with higher infant mortality, stunting and wasting. Furthermore, the unadjusted model, children whose mothers smoked and used polluting fuels had a 55% higher risk of losing a child before their first birthday (HR=1.55,CI:1.47-5.08). However, after-controlling-for-confounding variables, the combined effect of smoking and cooking fuel was not statistically significant, whereas educational-attainment and wealth-index were found to significantly lower infant-mortality risk. These findings highlight the vital need to promote clean-cooking fuels to enhance childhealth outcomes in Nigeria.

Keywords: Health and Morbidity, Spatial Demography, Mortality and Longevity, Children, Adolescents, and Youth

See extended abstract.