knowledge assessment of neonatal care among postnatal mothers

introduction : 99% of 4million neonatal mortality occur in developing countries every year. mortality rate of newborns accounts for 18.3 per 1000 live birth that comprised 69% of imr and 56% of under 5 mortality in iran. a  comparison of statistical trend between infant and newborn rate from 1988 to 2001 revealed a considerable decrease in imr but slightly decrease in nmr. training postnatal mothers  and preventing neonatal mortality rate is effective .this study has been carried out for assessing the knowledge regarding to neonatal care among postnatal mothers.methods in this cross-sectional study, from target population of mothers of referral neonates into ravar/kerman medical health center. a sample was chosen with convenient sampling method .then a questionnaire consisting of questions regarding to assessing generalized surveillance during neonatal and icter period and umbilical cord surveillance were collected. data were analyzed using spss 19. t test and anova were used for analyzing the relationship.results 316 mothers with mean age of 25.87 were studied. 8.2% of mothers had poor knowledge, 78.5% moderate and 13.3% had good knowledge. also  urbanmothers less than 24 year of age with 2 or 3 children and higher level of education obtained significantly higher knowledge score. conclusion the results showed that knowledge levels of 78.5% of mothers were moderate. so it is imperative to provide comprehensive training in the field of newborn and infant care for mothers.