Association between mothers experience of intimate partner violence and under-five morbidity in Nigeria

The aim of this study was to explore association between Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) and illness in childhood. The study was a secondary data analysis of the 2008 Nigeria Demographic Health Survey (NDHS), involving use of a stratified, 2-stage cluster sampling technique to select 21,160 women with at least one child ≤ 5 years old. Main exposure was experience of past-year IPV prior to survey. Outcome measured were risk of fever, acute respiratory infection (ARI) and diarrhoea within the past 2 weeks. The mean ages of women and children were 29±6.8 years and 27±17.1 months respectively. Prevalence of past-year IPV was 72.6%. Main predictors of under-five morbidity were sexual and physical IPV experience of mothers (AOR: 1.632; CI: 1.419-1.879) and (AOR: 1.17; CI: 1.02-1.36) respectively. Interventions aimed at improving child morbidity status should target protection of mothers from physical and sexual violence perpetration by partners.