| Summary: | Objective: Hand-foot-and-mouth disease (HFMD) is crucial and has a large-scale impact on worldwide healthcare systems in terms of expenses especially in the population of young children.
Methods: A community-based, case-control study was conducted to identify the factors influencing the occurrence of HFMD among children in day care centers (DCC). The study was conducted in three provinces in Northern Thailand including Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai, and Pha Yao. DCC and study samples were selected by a simple random method. A validated questionnaire was developed and used for collecting data after an index of item-objective congruence (IOC) method has been used to improve the quality of the questionnaire and piloted. Logistic regression was used to detect the associations between variables at the alpha =0.05.
Results: In total, 1,022 subjects were recruited into the analysis. Regarding parents’ characteristics, 77.3% of the subjects were female, the average age was 33.9 years, 85.3% were married and 92.2% were Buddhist, 30.4% earned 5,001- 10,000 baht a month, and 50.1% had 1-3 family members. 17.9% had a low level of knowledge, 49.3% had a neutral attitude, and 96.7% had good practice for HFMD prevention and control. 34.2% of the children were aged ≤ 2 years, 54.9% were male, 50.4% were overweight and 21.1% had been breastfed. Three associated factors were found statistically significant with the occurrence of HFMD; children aged ≤ 2 years (OR=7.05, 95%CI=3.25–15.28), the number of household members (OR=1.43, 95%CI=1.04–1.97), and parents’ knowledge (OR=2.35, 95C%= 1.47–3.77).
Conclusion: Improving knowledge of HFMD among the parents, particularly those having many household numbers, is essential in order to reduce the incidence of the disease.
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