title: Accounting for recent trends in the prevalence of diarrhoea in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): results from consecutive cross-sectional surveys.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To analyse trends in diarrhoea prevalence by maternal education, access to clean water and improved sanitation, household wealth index; to identify the sources of variation and assess contribution of changes in socioeconomic characteristics in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
  
  
  METHODS
  Consecutive cross-sectional surveys.
  
  
  METHODS
  DRC.
  
  
  METHODS
  The databases contain information on 9748 children from the 2001 Multiple Indicators Cluster Survey and 7987 children from the 2007 Demographic and Health Survey.
  
  
  METHODS
  N/A.
  
  
  METHODS
  Whether the child had diarrhoea 14 days preceding the survey.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The overall prevalence of diarrhoea decreased by 26 percent (from 22.1% in 2001 to 16.4% in 2007). Findings from the three complementary statistical methods are consistent and confirm a significant decrease in diarrhoea regardless of socioeconomic characteristics. Changes in behaviour and/or in public health policy seem to be the likely main source of the change. There were no significant changes in diarrhoea prevalence associated with variation of the population structure. It is worth mentioning that the decrease in diarrhoea prevalence is in contrast to the generalised poor living conditions of the population. Therefore, it is difficult to ascertain whether the decline in diarrhoea prevalence was due to real improvement in public-health policy or to data quality issues.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The decline of diarrhoea prevalence in our study need to be further investigated by conducting district-based or provincial-based studies to validate findings from household surveys such as Demographic and Health Surveys and Multiple Indicators Cluster Survey taking into account the current context of the country: ongoing conflict, poor socioeconomic and poor health infrastructure. However, improvement in living conditions such as access to clean water and improved sanitation will contribute to accelerate the reduction of diarrhoea prevalence as well as reduction of child mortality.
authors.affiliation: Department of Population and Development studies,  University of Kinshasa,  Democratic Republic of Congo.
authors.forename: Jacques B O
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Emina
authors.forename: Ngianga-Bakwin
authors.initials: NB
authors.lastname: Kandala