Assessment of Mothers/Care Givers Health Care Seeking Behavior for Childhood Illness in Rural Ensaro District, North Shoa Zone, Amhara Region, Ethiopia 2014
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Date
2014-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Introduction: The UN (United Nation) Millennium Development Goals (MDG 4) calls for
Ethiopia to reduce child mortality by a two-third by the year 2015. The practice of appropriate
health care seeking has a great potential to reduce the occurrence of severe and life-threatening
childhood illnesses. However, varieties of factors have been identified as the leading causes of
poor utilization of primary health care services. Poor socio-economic status, lack of physical
accessibility, attitude to modern treatment, low literacy level of the mothers, large family size,
number of symptoms, previous experience of child death, and perceived severity of illness were
the predictors of care seeking behavior
Objective: To assess mothers/care givers health care seeking behavior and its determinants for
childhood illnesses
Methodology: The study employed both quantitative and qualitative data collection methods
with face to face prepared questionnaire for quantitative and focus group discussion for
qualitative study from April 11 to May 10/2014. For quantitative data template was prepared and
the data was entered, categorized, coded, and summarized using EPI 3.5.3 and transformed to
SPSS version 20.00 for further analysis. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis
was done to see the association of each categories of variable with the outcome variable.
Significance was checked at 95% CI with p-value <0.05.
Result: Regarding child hood illness 4 weeks preceding the study. 212 (33.1%) children had
illness.
Most of the respondents 438(68.3%) believed that there were childhood illness that could not be
treated by modern medicine
Mothers/ caregivers who had diploma and above education level were more likely to seek health
care than those who were illiterate and Place of residence also appeared as an important factor
that influenced healthcare-seeking, with residents urban more likely seek health care than rural
residence.
Conclusion and Recommendation: The critical predictors of healthcare-seeking identified
using multivariate analysis are; place of residence, educational status of the mothers/care givers,
age of the mothers /care givers, distance of the health facility and private drug shop owner.
Regarding to recommendation, efforts need to be done by government and non-governmental
organization to improve the mothers’ health seeking behavior by providing information,
education and behavioral change communication.
Key words: mothers/care givers, health, care, seeking, behavior, childhood, illness, and rural
district
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Keywords
Mothers/care givers,, Health, care, Seeking, Behavior