Caregiver home based practices for managing children aged (0-59 months) with diarrheal disease in busia county, kenya.

ABSTRACT

Globally, diarrhea remains the second leading cause of reported mortalities among children (0-59 months) and a cause of significant morbidity, especially in developing countries. In Kenya, diarrhea accounts for 16% of deaths among children (0-59 months). It’s a major cause of mortality in children below five years after malaria and pneumonia in Busia County. Many of the children die due to poor home-based management of diarrhea. The main aim of the study was to explore the different interventions care givers use to manage diarrhea among children (0-59 months) in Busia County and factors associated with home-based management of diarrhea. This was a facility-based descriptive cross-sectional study done in Busia County. Multistage sampling was used to obtain the study sample and a sample size of 389 was used. Both inferential and descriptive statistics were used for quantitative data. Chi-square was used to test relationships between dependent and independent variables at 95% confidence interval. Logistic regression was used to examine the associations between socio-demographic and economic factors, level of knowledge and practices adopted for home-based care. A p-value of less than 0.05 was considered significant. The general knowledge of caregivers on home-based care was unsatisfactory. Out of the 389 caregivers interviewed, only 114(29.3%) had good knowledge level of knowledge on home-based management of diarrhea. Specifically, only 62(20.6%) could mention more than 1 acceptable cause of diarrhea while less than half of the caregivers (48%) thought diarrhea could be prevented. Knowledge of diarrhea management was also not sufficient. Despite all (389 caregivers) having practiced home-based management of diarrhea in the in the last 2 weeks, the study revealed that the overall home-based care practices were inappropriate 280(72%). Socio-demographic and economic factors like education, occupation, distance to the health facility, source of information and number of household members were significantly associated with appropriate home-based management of diarrhea at