Mothers’ Knowledge, Attitude and Practice Towards the Prevention and Home-Based Management of Diarrheal Disease among Under-Five Children in Diredawa, East Ethiopia, 2016: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background: Diarrhea remains the 2^nd leading cause of death among children under 5 globally. It kills more young children than AIDS. It would have been prevented by simple home management by giving oral rehydration therapy. Mothers play a central role in its management and prevention. So, the main objective of this study was to assess mothers’ knowledge, attitude & practice in prevention & home-based management of diarrhea among under-five children in Dire Dawa, East Ethiopia.

Methods: Institutional based cross-sectional study design was used. Mothers who had under-five children with diarrhea in the last two weeks were the study populations. The total sample size was 295. The simple random sampling method was used to collect the sample and clients were interviewed face to face by using a standard and structured questionnaire. The data quality was assured by translation, retranslation and pretesting the questionnaire, training was provided to the data collectors and supervisors, close supervision was done and double data entry was performed. Data was checked for completeness, consistency and then entered into Epi Info version 3.1 and analyzed by using SPSS version 20. Data interpretation was made using graphs, tables, and result statements.

Result: 295 participants were included in this study and all of them were mothers with 100% response rate, from these around two-thirds (65.2%) of the mothers had good knowledge, but only (45.1%) of them had a positive attitude and less than half (42%) of them had good practice towards prevention and home management of diarrhea in under-five children.

Conclusion: In this study, there is an encouraging level of knowledge but the attitude and practice of mothers were not satisfactory. So, increase knowledge, create positive attitude and practice among mothers are the important components for the prevention and home management of under 5 diarrheal diseases.