A Study to Assess the Effectiveness of Structured Teaching Programme on Knowledge and Practice Regarding Diarrhea and Its Management among Mothers of Under-fives Children in Selected Rural Areas of Fatehabad

Abstract

Diarrhea is the major causes of morbidity and mortality in children’s of under-five years in developing countries and an important cause of malnutrition. In New Delhi (2007) slum area, the attack rate of acute diarrhea disease (ADD) was 7.73% and ADD’s annual adjusted morbidity rate was 1.69 episodes per child per year. In 2001 an estimated 1.5 million below 5 years died from diarrhea. Eight out of 10 of these deaths occur in the first two years of life. According to UNICEF study each child on an average in the developing world suffers from diarrhea for more than three times year. In the world an estimated 13,000million episodes of diarrhea with 3.2 million deaths occur among children annually. Death of 80% occurs in children under two year of age,9.5% death in infants and 23–30% in under-five age group children due to diarrhea with a heavy economic burden. A pre-experimental study was conducted with one group pre-test post-test design. Convenient sampling was used to select 100 mothers of under-fives children from the selected rural area of Fatehabad. The objectives of the study are: (1)To assess the pretest knowledge and practice on diarrhea and its management among mothers of under-fives children.(2) To evaluate the effectiveness of structured teaching programme on diarrhea and its management among mothers of under-five children. 3. To correlate the relationship between the knowledge and practice on diarrhea and its management among mothers of under-five children. 4. To find the association between the posttest knowledge and practice of mothers of under-five children with selected demographic variables. The research tool consisted of following parts: Part 1: sociodemographic profile sheet; Part 2: structured knowledge questionnaire to assess the knowledge of mothers of under-five children regarding diarrhea and its management; Part 3: check list to assess the practice of mothers of under-five children. A house to house survey was conducted 100 mothers of under-fives children. The study explored that 66% of family was nuclear and 34% of family was joint family. In pretest, 92% of mothers have poor knowledge and 8% of mothers have average knowledge regarding diarrhea and its management. In posttest,48.0% mothers have average knowledge and 52%mothers have the good knowledge regarding diarrhea and its management. In posttest more than half 06(06%) were having low practice score and 60(60%) were having average practice score and 34 (34%) of them with good practice score. Its evidence that there was a significant improvement in posttest knowledge and practice score regarding diarrhea and its management.