Association of Animal Species Ownership with under-5 Diarrhea Prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa: An Analysis of 114 Demographic and Health Surveys

Deaths due to diarrhea among children younger than five have been rapidly decreasing, from an estimated 484,781 in 2010 to 245,966 in 2021. A report by the International Livestock Research Institute in 2012 found that the top 13 most important zoonoses were responsible for 2.2 million human deaths. Questions remain whether the benefits of animal ownership outweigh the potential harms of being exposed to potentially deadly zoonotic pathogens. This study uses national surveys to assess the association between animal ownership and under-5 diarrhea in sub-Saharan Africa. Our outcome was a two-week reported prevalence of diarrhea. Information about animal ownership, socio-economic status (SES), age of children, and the familys primary water source were used in this analysis. We used Poisson regression with a log link to output prevalence ratios from a mixed-effects model. The study population included 680,752 children under the age of five who lived in rural areas in sub-Saharan Africa between 2005-2022. Our model showed a slight increase of two-week reported diarrhea among children whose families owned animals (PR: 1.02, 95% CI: 1.00, 1.04). Families who owned more animals reported a lower diarrhea prevalence (11.22%) compared to families who owned fewer animals (13.71%). Additionally, children whose families owned no animals had a diarrhea prevalence of 12.09%, compared to children whose families owned more than one species of animal (12.20%). Families who only owned pigs had a diarrhea prevalence of 15.31%. This study continues to highlight the complicated relationship between animal ownership and reported diarrhea prevalence. Further research needs to examine the role of animal ownership in the context of local weather patterns, especially after extreme precipitation events following extended dry period. There remains an open question whether the benefits of animal ownership outweigh the potential pitfalls, especially in consideration of climate change.