Mother’s perception and treatment seeking behaviour for childhood diarrhea in Dendi district, west Shoa, Ethiopia

• Main Author: Tizita Dengia Etea
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Makhdoomi Printers 2014-01-01
• Series: Global Journal of Medicine and Public Health
• Subjects: Mothers/caregivers; childhood diarrhea; perception
• Online Access: http://gjmedph.com/uploads/O5-Vo3No3.pdf

Background: Diarrhea is a major cause of childhood morbidity and mortality in Ethiopia. Thus, current level of perception and treatment seeking behaviour need to be considered to design the corresponding best possible interventions. Objective: To assess mothers’ perception and treatment seeking behaviors for childhood diarrhea. Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out on 845 mothers who had under-five children drawn by multi-stage sampling in Dendi district to collect information on their treatment seeking behaviours. Focus group discussions were held to explore mothers’ perception. Result: Mothers perceived childhood diarrhea could result from traditional and biomedical causes. Treatments varied according to their perceived causes. The two week period prevalence of diarrhea among children was 22.1%. Home treatment was sought by 73.2% of the respondents while 55.3% and 69.3% sought help from traditional and health facilities respectively. Only 4.3% of them didn’t seek treatment. Educational status and child’s age had significant association with seeking traditional and health facilities treatment respectively (p value <0.05). Conclusion: Seeking treatment from health facilities was common after home and traditional treatments failed and the disease got severe. Therefore, interventions need to focus on the importance of prompt treatment, proper home treatment and discourage reliance on harmful traditional treatments.