Background: Diarrhea is an important problem among the under-five children in India.
Objective: The paper examines long-term impacts of recurrent floods on diarrhea among under-five children in Uttar Pradesh, India.
Design: A two stage stratified cluster survey was conducted in flood affected (exposed) and non-flood affected areas (unexposed).
Results: The long-term impact of the floods was not clearly marked in the overall prevalence of diarrhea with the exposed group having prevalence of 55.1% as against 56.2% in the unexposed group of children under five. Economic condition of the household is associated with the prevalence of diarrhea in both exposed and unexposed strata. Anemia was found to be a significant risk factor for diarrhea among children in both the flood exposed and non-flood exposed populations. The recurrent floods did not have any significant effect on the prevalence of diarrhea in relation to gender, religion, caste, and household size.
Conclusions: The study indicates that the long-term impacts of floods are very differently manifested than the immediate impacts.
Keywords: Uttar Pradesh; diarrhea; recurrent flood; under-five children.