National screening for developmental delays and their determinants among Egyptian school age children: A step towards implementing life skills programs

Ammal M Metwally; Maysa S Nassar; Ebtissam M Salah El-Din; Ali M Abdallah; Zeinab Khadr; Marwa W Abouelnaga; Engy A Ashaat; Mostafa M El-Saied; Ahmed M Elwan; Randa I Bassiouni; Zeinab M Monir; Hala Y Badawy; Eman M Dewdar; Hazem M El-Hariri; Ahmed Aboulghate; Carine Hanna; Thanaa M Rabah; Amira Mohsen; Mona A Elabd

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0287315

National screening for developmental delays and their determinants among Egyptian school age children: A step towards implementing life skills programs

PLoS One. 2023 Sep 19;18(9):e0287315. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0287315. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Ammal M Metwally¹, Maysa S Nassar², Ebtissam M Salah El-Din², Ali M Abdallah³, Zeinab Khadr^{4

5}, Marwa W Abouelnaga², Engy A Ashaat⁶, Mostafa M El-Saied⁷, Ahmed M Elwan⁷, Randa I Bassiouni⁶, Zeinab M Monir², Hala Y Badawy⁸, Eman M Dewdar⁸, Hazem M El-Hariri¹, Ahmed Aboulghate¹, Carine Hanna¹, Thanaa M Rabah¹, Amira Mohsen¹, Mona A Elabd²

Affiliations

¹ Community Medicine Research Department, Medical Research and Clinical Studies Institute, National Research Centre, Dokki, Cairo, Egypt.
² Child Health Department, Medical Research and Clinical Studies Institute, National Research Centre, Dokki, Cairo, Egypt.
³ Quantitative Methods Department, Aswan University, Tingar, Egypt.
⁴ Department of Statistics, Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University, Giza, Egypt.
⁵ The Social Research Center of the American University in Cairo, New Cairo, Egypt.
⁶ Clinical Genetics Dept., Human Genetics and Genome Research Institute, National Research Centre, Dokki, Cairo, Egypt.
⁷ Child with Special Needs Dept., Medical Research and Clinical Studies Institute, National Research Centre, Dokki, Cairo, Egypt.
⁸ Disability Prevention General Directorate, Ministry of Health and Population, Cairo, Egypt.

Abstract

Aim: This study aimed to estimate the national prevalence of developmental delays (DDs) and their determinants among Egyptian children aged 6 to 12 years. Such estimation is a prerequisite step toward the application of Life Skill Education (LSE) programs that will potentiate children's future capabilities.

Methods: Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales" was used as a reliable and diagnostic test for DDs screening during this national cross sectional study. Gross motor (GM), fine motor (FM), daily living skills, communication, and socialization skills were assessed. The multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to identify factors associated with DDs. The Adjusted Odds Ratio (AOR) with a 95% Confidence Interval was estimated to indicate the strength of association. A p-value of <0.05 was used to declare statistical significance.

Results: Out of the 20324 surveyed school-aged children, 7.4% were found to have at least one delay. Communication deficits were the most common (6.4%) followed by delay in daily living skills (2.0%). The final model of logistic regression had a good fit for seven variables out of the sociodemographic, epidemiological characteristics, maternal and perinatal problems that were associated with a higher likelihood of at least one DD: Children suffering from any convulsions (AOR = 4.32; 95% CI: 3.18-5.88), male gender (AOR = 1.86; 95% CI: 1.65-2.09), birth weight less than 2.5 kg (AOR = 1.77; 95% CI: 1.40-2.24), history of maternal health problem during pregnancy (AOR = 1.64; 95% CI:1.34-2.01), children staying in an incubator for more than two days (AOR = 1.57, 95% CI: 1.29-1.91), having less educated fathers (AOR = 1.55, 95% CI: 1.24-1.95) and belonging to the middle social class (AOR = 1.40, 95% CI: 1.24-1.58).

Conclusion: The identified types and determinants for each DD are allowing for the implementation of tailored programs for school children's life skills promotion for achieving the most sustainable effects on children's biological and psychological health and well-being.

Copyright: © 2023 Metwally et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Anxiety*
Birth Weight
Child
Cross-Sectional Studies
Egypt / epidemiology
Female
Humans
Male
Parent-Child Relations*
Pregnancy
Seizures

Grants and funding

This study was conducted through a project titled “National Prevalence Survey for Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs): Assessing its Epidemiological Pattern and Risk Factors” under the leadership of Prof. Ammal Mokhtar Metwally and Prof. Zeinab Khader (Principal Investigators). All the funding required for the project implementation was supported by Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (Egypt), project ID Number ”13893”. The funder had no role in the design of the study, collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and in writing the manuscript. There was no additional external funding received for this study.