Table 3.

Risk factors of ALRTIs among children under five in SSA

Main theme	Risk factors	Authors
Malnutrition	Malnutrition	[14, 44, 28, 43, 13, 48, 50]
	Underweight	[22, 33]
	Stunting	[33, 26]
	Anaemia	[25]
	Lack of breastfeeding/exclusive breastfeeding	[1, 14, 22, 36]
	Children who did not receive vitamin A supplement	[29, 30, 25]
Household facilities	Poor ventilation/absence of windows	[1, 35, 48, 53]
	House without separate kitchen	[1, 18]
	Damp roof, mould growths on walls	[51]
	Households with unclean water	[51]
	Households with poor toilet facilities	[51]
	Living in house with no chimney, eaves space,	[34]
	Children in households with a low proportion of electricity	[31]
Lack of Immunisation	Failure to receive the second dose of the pentavalent vaccine	[46]
	Unvaccinated children	[1]
	Poor immunisation	[14]
Cooking	Inhouse cooking,	[32, 34, 47, 28]
	Unclean fuel/stove or biomas	[14, 22, 43, 48]
	Frequency of cooking	[34, 47]
	Children who were held by their mothers while cooking	[35, 48]
	Solid fuel for cooking,	[22, 53, 20, 27]
	Cow dung fuel use,	[34, 50]
Smoking	Cigarette smoking,	[15, 14, 35, 50]
	Exposure to wood smoke,	[15]
Socio demographic	Child born to women with no formal or primary education	[13-15, 22, 31, 31-33, 13, 50]
	Children > 2 years	[6, 33, 47, 19, 16, 43, 25, 37, 26]
	Children < 2 years	[16, 25, 37]
	Rural residency	[6, 16, 43, 13]
	Urban residency	[14, 31, 25]
	Mothers who do not listen to or watch television	[32]
	Younger maternal age < 20 years	[22, 16, 37]
	Age of the mother/ caregiver > 35 years	[48]
	Housewives/mothers with no occupation	[30, 48]
	High order birth	[43]
	Large family size (> 5)/crowded homes	[14, 18, 22, 19, 28, 53]
	Poor households	[43, 13]
Hygienic practices	No hand washing,	[16, 38]
	Cockroach infestation	[20]
Pre-existing conditions	History of diarrhoea	[31]
	HIV infection	[15]
Climate issues	Changing climate	[45]
	Higher indoor bacterial counts	[51]
	Exposure to high concentrations of PM2.5 is a risk factor	[21]
Pregnancy	Uterine irritability during pregnancy	[20]
	physical exercise during pregnancy	[20]
Chemical exposure	The use of agro-chemicals is a risk factor	[24]