Prevalence of childhood illness and mothers’/caregivers’ care seeking behavior in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia: A descriptive community based cross sectional study

Introduction: In Ethiopia, even though there are great achievements in decreasing infant and child mortality from year 2000 to 2011, still children are suffering from diarrheal diseases, respiratory problems and malnutrition. This study was done to determine the prevalence of illnesses among under-five children and mothers’/caregivers’ care seeking behavior for childhood illnesses in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia. Methods: A community based cross-sectional study was done on a sample of 415 mothers/caregivers from April 15 to May 15, 2011. Three kebeles (the smallest administrative unit) from Bahir Dar were selected randomly. The sample was proportionally distributed to the selected kebeles according to their population size. To be eligible to participate in the study, mothers had to live in households that had children under five years of age. These households were selected by systematic sampling method. Mothers/caregivers were interviewed in their homes using a structured questionnaire that had been pre-tested. The collected data were analyzed using a computer program of SPSS version 20.0. Result and Conclusions: The overall two weeks prevalence of childhood illness that had one or more symptoms of disease was 110 (26.5%). The prevalence of the most commonly reported symptoms were diarrhea, fever, acute respiratory infection (ARI) and others 11.3%, 10%, 6.3% and 4.6% among children of under five years respectively. Eighty (72.7%) of mothers sought treatment from health care facilities for sick children. The main reasons for not seeking treatment from health care facilities as reported by mothers/caregivers were, 53.3% Illness was not serious, 26.7% lack of money and 13.3% did not see any benefit for such childhood illness. Hence there is a need for designing a tailored health message for mother/ caregivers about preventable childhood illness and treatment seeking by the local health extension workers and program planners.