Socio-demographic characteristics
This research involved a total of 422 school children, which yields 100% response rate. About 227 (53.79%) were females. The mean (±SD) age of study participants was 11.5 (±2.31) years. Half of the parents (50.24%) receive less than 500 ETB of monthly income (Table 1).
Environmental and behavioral characteristics
Two-thirds of children's parents (63.6 %) collected water from well water and 258(61.1%) washing their hands at critical moments. Two hundred and forty-three (57.6 %) of children frequently brushed their teeth and 183 (43.8 %) clean their fingernail. More than two-thirds of children (65.4%) always had to wear shoes. Two hundred and thirty-nine (56.6%) children had little knowledge on prevention and control of intestinal parasite infection (Table 2).
Prevalence of the intestinal parasite infection
The prevalence of intestinal parasite infection was 29.9% (95% CI= 27.7-32.1%). For male and female children, the prevalence of intestinal parasite infection was 31.3% and 28.6% respectively. E.histolytica/dispar 62 (49.21%), G.lamblia 28 (22.22%), A.lumbricoides 23 (18.25%), H.nana 6 (4.76%), Hookworm 4 (3.18%), and T.trichiura 3 (2.38%) were the parasites identified in this study. The rate of single, double, and triple parasite infections was 73.02%, 20.63%, and 6.35%, respectively.
Factors associated with intestinal parasitic infection
In multivariable analysis; grade level, father occupation, clean fingernail, open field defecation, hand washing at critical times, and shoe wearing habit were discovered to be statistically associated with parasitic intestinal diseases (p-value < 0.05) (Table 3).
According to this study, children in grade 1-4 and 5-6 were 8.21 and 2.5 times more likely than their counterparts to have intestinal parasitic diseases [ AOR=8.21, 95% CI:3.88, 17.47, and AOR=2.50, 95% CI: 1.14, 5.54]. Children whose father's work was a daily worker were 2.96 times more likely than children whose father's job was a civil servant to develop intestinal parasitic diseases[AOR=2.96, 95% CI: 1.07, 8.18].
Children with unclean fingernails were 1.72 times more probable than children with clean fingernails to develop parasitic intestinal infections [ AOR=1.72, 95% CI: 1.04, 2.85]. On the other side, children who were washing hands at critical moments were 68% less probable than their counterparts to develop intestinal parasite infection [ AOR=0.32, 95% CI: 0.16, 0.65]. Children who defecate in the open field were 2.82 times higher odds of developing intestinal parasite infections compared to children who did not practice open field defecation [AOR=2.82, 95% CI: 1.21, 7.45]. Besides, the prevalence of intestinal parasite diseases was 72% greater in children with uneven shoe habit [ AOR=1.72, 95% CI: 1.02, 2.91 ].