Risk factors for early childhood disability in Bangladesh: Evidence from Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2019

Early childhood is a vital part of human life because most of the brain developments occur in this particular period. Early childhood disability is a significant global public health burden, which can negatively impact the children's quality of life and their overall productivity. It is also a major social and economic problem in Bangladesh. Therefore, it is very important to understand the associated factors for early childhood disability, which may help disability prevention, better management and policy formulation. The main objective of this study is to investigate the child, family, and community-level factors associated with early childhood disability in Bangladesh.

A cross sectional nationally representative data was derived from Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS), 2019. A total of 14,072 Bangladeshi children under five years of age were selected for this study. Various types of statistical analysis (simple, bivariate, multivariable) were performed. To assess the bivariate relationship between chosen categorical variables (independent) and early childhood disability (dependent), a chi-square test was used. The multivariable ordinal logistic regression was used to find out the association of disability with child, family, and community-level factors.

The results show that 2.0% of the children have at least one disability and 0.8% have more disabilities. Several factors namely not attending in early childhood education [Odds Ratio (OR) = 0.65; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.13-1.17 Ρ = 0.01], having mother's functional difficulty (OR = 1.23; 95% (CI) = 0.58-1.88 Ρ <0.001), unhappy mother's life (OR = 0.85; 95% CI = 0.30-1.39 Ρ <0.001), parents without internet access (OR = 0.68; 95% CI = 0.06-1.29 Ρ = 0.03) and parents using mobile phone (OR = 0.52; 95% CI = 0.09-0.95 Ρ = 0.02) were found to be important for early childhood disability in Bangladesh.

Early childhood disability is still neglected in Bangladesh and further epidemiological studies are recommended. The findings of this study may help policy makers and relevant stakeholders to develop interventions for reducing the overall burden of early childhood disability.