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. 2018 May 29;44(1):61.
doi: 10.1186/s13052-018-0503-z.

Level of modern health care seeking behaviors among mothers having under five children in Dangila town, north West Ethiopia, 2016: a cross sectional study

Amare Belachew Dagnew  1 , Tilahun Tewabe  2 , Rajalakshmi Murugan  3
Affiliations

Level of modern health care seeking behaviors among mothers having under five children in Dangila town, north West Ethiopia, 2016: a cross sectional study

Amare Belachew Dagnew et al. Ital J Pediatr. .

Abstract

Background: Health seeking behavior is an action taken by an individual who perceive to have a health problem. In most developing countries including Ethiopia the health of the children is strongly dependant on maternal health care behavior. Most childhood morbidities and mortalities are associated with low level of mothers health care seeking behavior. Therefore, the objective of this study was to assess level of modern health care seeking behavior among mothers having under five children in Dangila town, North West Ethiopia.

Methods: Community based quantitative cross-sectional study was conducted from April 15 to May 15, 2016. Systematic random sampling technique was used to select study participants. A total of273 mothers with children less than five years were included in this study. The data was collected from all five Kebeles using interviewer administered questionnaire. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to present the data. Both bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to identify factors associated with level of modern health care seeking behavior.

Results: Prevalence of modern health care seeking behavior was 82.1%. Age of mothers (AOR = 2.4(1.1, 5.3), age of the child (AOR = 6.7(2.8, 22.2), severity of illness (AOR = 5.2(1.2, 22.6) and family number (AOR = 6.4(2.1, 20.2) were predictors of modern health care seeking behavior among mothers.

Conclusions: Majority of the mothers preferred to take their children to modern health care when they got illness. Age of children, age of mother, number of family and severity of illness were the determinant factors for modern health care seeking behavior. 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 behaviors.

Keywords: Dangila; Modern health care seeking behavior; North West Ethiopia; Under five children.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Ethical clearance obtained from Addis Ababa University, department of nursing and midwifery research committee. All participants provided verbal consent to participate in the study.

Competing interests

The authors declared that they have no competing interests.

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Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

References

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