Assessment of Prevalence and Factors Affecting Health Seeking Behaviors on Common Childhood Illness Among Mothers Having Under Five Children in Dangila Town, North West Ethiopia, 2015
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Date
2015-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Background - Health care seeking behavior has been defined as any action undertaken by
individuals who perceive themselves to have a health problem or to be ill for the purpose of
finding an appropriate remedy when they have a health problem or illness. In most developing
Key Words= Health Seeking Behavior, Under five children's, common childhood illness and
caregivers.
countries, the health of the children is strongly dependant on maternal healthcare behavior how
ever there is few studies conducted to assess magnitude and factors associated to it .
Objective - To assess prevalence and factors affecting health seeking behaviors on common
childhood illness among mothers with under five children in Dangila town, North West Ethiopia,
2015.
Methodology - A community based cross-sectional study was conducted among 273 mothers
/care givers with under five children in Dangila town from April 15 to May 15, 2015. Sample
size was allotted to each kebeles and systematic sampling technique was used to select study
participants. An interview based structured questionnaire were used for data collections and pre-
testing was conducted on 5% of sample size prior to the actual data collection process. The
collected data was entered into Epi info version 7 and exported to SPSS version 20.0 for
analysis and results was displayed with Frequencies distribution, binary and multiple logistic
regressions was done. OR and 95% confidence interval was computed.
Results: A total of 273 respondents were involved with a response rate of 100 %. Among them,
224(82.1% o) were seek medical care from health institutions. Illness was mild 12(24.5%), lack
of money (16.3%) and thought sickness is incurable (16.3%) were the major reasons for not
seeking medical care. Mothers age (AOR=2.42(1.085, 5.399), age of children (AOR=6.96(2.85,
22.177), severity of illness (AOR=5.191(1.211, 22.608) and family number (AOR=6.442(2.054,
20.203) were identified as the major predictors of health seeking behaviors of mothers/caregivers.
Conclusions and Recommendations: Majority of the mothers/ caregivers preferred to take their
children to government health institutions when sick. Age of children, mothers age, family
number and severity of illness were main factors of health
seeking behaviors . Therefore,
health care services should be strengthened at community level through Community
Integrated Management of Childhood Illness, Information, Education Communication /
Behavioral Change Communication strategies to improve mothers‟ health care seeking behavior
Description
Keywords
Health Seeking Behavior, Under five children's, Common childhood illness