The Impact of Household Indoor Socioeconomic Factors on the prescence of ARI among children in Nakuru Town, Kenya

The prevalence of Acute Respiratory Infections (ARI) in children under 5 has commonly been attributed to exposure to polluted indoor air from biomass combustion. In Kenya, Acute Respiratory Infections (ARI) accounted for 67% of outpatient morbidity cases in children under 5 and 41% of outpatient morbidity cases in children under 5 in Nakuru Town. The cause that has been attributed to the high cases of respiratory infections in children living in rural areas is indoor air pollution from biomass combustion. Despite urban areas having a variation in household socioeconomic characteristics, clear studies have not been done to assess whether indoor air pollution from energy sources is an influencing factor on the presence of ARI in children under 5. The objective of this study was to determine the impact of household socioeconomic factors on the prevalence of ARI among children under 5. An observation and a cross-sectional household survey were conducted on 187 randomly selected households comprising of low-income and middle-income strata. The socioeconomic factors that had an influence on the presence of ARI in low-income households were, hours spent indoors and carpeting while none of the socioeconomic factors influenced the presence of ARI in middle-income households.