Mothers’ health care seeking behavior and associated factors for common childhood illnesses, Northwest Ethiopia: community based cross-sectional study

Abstract

BackgroundSubstantial progress has been made in reducing child mortality over the last decades, however the magnitude of the problem is yet high globally Appropriate health care-seeking behavior of mothers/guardians for common childhood illnesses could prevent a significant number of child deaths and complications due to childhood illnesses, currently, there is few of studies in Ethiopia. Therefore, this study aimed to assess mothers/caregivers health care seeking behavior for their children in Northwest Ethiopia.MethodsCommunity based cross-sectional study of rural mothers living in Aneded district from February to March 2016. Data were collected using structured questionnaire by an interviewer. Bivariate and multivariable logistic regression analyses were performed to identify factors associated with health care seeking behavior. Variables having P value ≤0.2 in the bivariate analysis were considered for multivariable analysis. P-value less than 0.05 was used to declare that there was statistically significant association. Odds Ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) was used to determine the strength and direction of association.ResultA total of 410 mothers participated in this study. Among 48.8% (95% CI: 44, 53.6%) had sought health care, only 27% sought health care within a day. Having awareness of childhood illness (AOR = 3.8, 95% CI: 2.18–6.72), perceived importance of early treatment (AOR = 3.5, 95% CI: 2.00–6.07) and child age < 24 months (AOR = 1.7, 95% CI: 1.08–2.68) and illness not being perceived as severe (AOR:= 0.17, 95% CI: 0.09–0.30) were all factors associated with mothers healthcare seeking behavior during their child illness.ConclusionOverall health care seeking behavior level was low. Awareness, perceived illness severity, perceived early treatment and having young children were predictors of mothers’ health care seeking behavior. The Woreda health office administrators and health professionals should work to improve mothers’ awareness and perception towards childhood problems and the importance of early seeking appropriate health care using the existed structures (one-to-five women networking and health developmental army).Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12913-019-3897-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Does free of charge policy increase care-seeking for children under five in Sierra Leone? Evidence from population-based studies from 2008-2016

“…We also found that children over one year of age had a low prevalence of care-seeking for fever. The same association was found in other studies in Africa [25,26]. This could be explained by the fact that the caregivers of older children, having dealt with several episodes of childhood febrile illnesses as the child was aging, may have got experienced in treating fevers without resorting to a public health center.…”

“…Using fever as an indicator of morbidity in children under ve this study aims to evaluate the trend in the prevalence of care-seeking for fever as well as to identify determinants of utilization of healthcare services by U5 caregivers in the context of FHCI. Independent variables included those for the description of the socio-demographic and those for the assessment of the determinants of the care-seeking for fever: the respondent's age ( [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24], [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34], and ≥35 years); the level of education of the mother of the child (none formal level of education, primary, and secondary or higher level of education); the number of children ever born in the household ( [1][2], [3][4] and 5≥children); the gender of the household head of the child; the age of the head of the household of the child ( [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24], [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34], and ≥35 years); the wealth index (richest, richer, middle, poor and poorest); the regions (east, north, south, and west)...…”

High common childhood illnesses while treatment seeking behavior of mothers’/care givers’ was low at rural northwest Ethiopia

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Knowledge and practice of health extension workers on drug provision for childhood illness in west Gojjam, Amhara, Northwest Ethiopia

“…David W. Hosmer and Stanley Lemeshow in their second edition book entitled "Applied Logistic Regression" recommended using a P-value of less than 0.25 as a screening criterion for variable selection for the multivariable analysis [39]. Other published articles used a p-value of 0.2 as a cut-off point to select variables for the multivariable analysis [40][41][42][43]. Therefore, in this study, variables having P-value ≤0.25 in the bivariate analysis were considered for multivariable analysis.…”