Practices of mothers with 0-24 month infants in management of diarrhea and determination of their level of knowlwdge in Erzurum city centre

This descriptive and cross-sectional study was carried out in 10 primary health care centers in Erzurum city center with mothers having 0-24 month infants to determine their practices in management of diarrhea and their level of knowledge. The study was conducted using a questionnaire with 600 mothers chosen with simple randomization method among 8530 mothers. The data were collected by face to face interviews between January 1998 and March 1998. Study results have shown that 97.8% of mothers believed in the necessity of breastfeeding during diarrhea while the rest believed that breastfeeding would aggravate diarrhea. Nearly all mothers knew that water should be administered during diarrhea. The rate of ORS users during diarrhea was 56.3%, rate of mothers preparing ORS at home was 26.3%, and the rate of mothers with right knowledge of using period was 15.7%. 90.8% of mothers have stated that medical help should be sought in case children suffer from diarrhea. Some 58.7% of mothers had sufficient information about the nature of the disease and 54.5% about the way it transmits. It was established that as the educational level of mothers increased, knowledge of right supplementary nutrients and rate of preparing ORS correctly have also increased. It was also found that as infants grow older, the incidence of diarrhea also increases and the prevalence of diarrhea in merely breastfed infants is lower than those fed with mixed nutrients and the difference between them is statistically significant (p<0.001).