Environmental Factors and Childhood Fever in Areas of the Ouagadougou – Health and Demographic Surveillance System – Burkina Faso

Franklin Bouba Djourdebbé, Université de Montréal

Abstract: The analysis of the relationship between health and the environment raises both conceptual and methodological issues, especially when studying children. These difficulties come from 1) the multifactorial nature of the dependent variables (health, fever, diarrhea, etc.) 2) coarse definitions of the variables of interest such as access to clean water, sanitation, hygiene, etc. This study seeks to analyze the effect of immediate environmental factors on fever among children. Data are from the Ouagadougou Health and Demographic Surveillance System and logistic regression models used to access these effects. Results suggest that the effects of certain environmental factors are mitigated by various demographic, socioeconomic and neighborhood factors. The management of household waste and sewage water is significant for the incidence of childhood fever. Also, there are some notable counterintuitive results that contribute to our methodological efforts to improve define the environmental variables.