OPEN DEFECATION IN ERITREA: A BOX-JENKINS ARIMA APPROACH

Most people who live in Eritreadefecate in the open. In fact, open defecation is far more common in rural Eritrea than in urban Eritrea.Given thatmost people in Eritrea live in rural areas, it leaves a lot to be desired, especially from a public health perspective. Using annual time series data onthe number of people who practice open defecation in Eritreafrom 2000 –2017, the study predicts the annual number of people who will still be practicing opendefecation over the period 2017 –2021. The study applies the Box-Jenkins ARIMA methodology. ThediagnosticADF tests show thattheODRseries under consideration is an I (1) variable. Based on the AIC,the study presents the ARIMA (0, 1, 1) model as the optimal model. The diagnostic tests further revealthat the presented model isverystable and its residuals are stationary in levelsand also normally distributed.The results of the study indicate that the number of people practicing open defecation in Eritreais likely to decline, although slightly,over the period2018 –2022, from approximately 66% to almost 62% of the total population. Indeed, open defecation is still very high in Eritrea.