Abstract
Diarrhea is a common cause of child-related hospitalization and mortality among children under the age of five in South Africa. This study was conducted to assess the knowledge and practices of caregivers regarding prevention and management of diarrhea among children under the age of five in the Thulamela Municipality of South Africa. A quantitative approach using a descriptive cross-sectional survey was used. A questionnaire was adopted to collect data from caregivers at thirty primary health-care facilities using convenient sampling. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 24.0 was used to analyze data. Most of the respondents have fair knowledge about diarrhea, oral rehydration therapy/salt sugar solution and its usage during diarrheal episodes. However, most of them (81.7%) do not use the salt sugar solution when their children have diarrhea. Almost all the respondents practice a hand washing hygiene for themselves and their children; 97.2% do not reheat cooked food before feeding their children; 95.5% do not drink untreated water as their source of drinking water is the municipal supply. The practices of these respondents do not reflect their knowledge in terms of the use of oral rehydration solution/salt and sugar solution. Further efforts should be made to educate caregivers on the mode of transmission of diarrheal pathogens.
Highlights
Diarrhea diseases have notably been identified as the leading infectious cause of preventable death among children below the age of five
The results presented are on the knowledge and practice of caregivers regarding diarrhea and its preventive practices for food and water
Findings in this study revealed that despite the fact that more than half (58.9%) of the caregivers who participated in this study attained tertiary education level, had a fair knowledge about diarrhea, they do not really know what causes diarrhea
Summary
Diarrhea diseases have notably been identified as the leading infectious cause of preventable death among children below the age of five. Several interventions have been in place to tackle diarrhea risk factors [12] including the use of rotavirus vaccine, support and promotion of exclusive breastfeeding at least in the first six months of a the child’s life, good community health literacy programs on how to manage and prevent diarrhea episodes and keep the children healthy through the use of oral rehydration solution (ORS) used to replace lost fluid as a result of dehydration, good hand washing with soap, use of safe drinking water and proper food and water storage containers [2,5,13,14]. In the context of Thulamela B Municipality, Vhembe District, South Africa, knowledge (K) and practice (P) surveys aimed at measuring caregivers’ ability to understand and use health information on the management and prevention of diarrhea disease among children aged 0–5 years as well as form a baseline for future studies or proffer intervention [16] are needed. Caregiver: For the purpose of this study, a caregiver is any person who brought the child to the clinic for consultation
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