Prevalence and Factors Associated with Pneumonia Among Under-Fives Attending Kiryandongo General Hospital

ABSTRACT Pneumonia is still a major contributor of morbidity and mortality, especially among the underfives of sub-Saharan Africa. This, occurring in the backdrop of global reports of prevalence decrease between 2000 and 2015 of more than 22%, is cause for concern. There has to be factors that can be attributed to this non-uniform fall in prevalence especially in Uganda, and Kiryandongo where shockingly, data on the subject matter is minimal, if not totally non-existent. The study set out to assess the prevalence of pneumonia, the various factors associated with this prevalence and the incidence of pneumonia-HIV coinfection among children below the age of five years attending Kiryandongo General Hospital. A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted involving 2,530 pediatric admissions over a period of 9 months. 418 (16.72%) pneumonia cases were diagnosed with significant factors being child age, sex, sero-status, nutritional status, immunization and breastfeeding history, low family socio-economic status, rural residence with firewood use, low maternal age and educational status. Incidence of pneumonia-HIV coinfection was 26.79%, a value that would be even higher when the HIV-exposed infants are included in the statistics.