Mothers’ Knowledge, Attitude and Practice Regarding Diarrhea and its Management in Morang Nepal: An Interventional Study

Purpose: To assess diarrhea-related knowledge, attitude and practice through successive educational interventions.
Methods: This was an interventional study conducted at nine different locations of Morang district, Nepal from March 2010 to January 2011. Multistage random sampling approach was adopted to sample 630 subjects and they were randomly assigned to test and control groups. The subjects in the test group were provided an educational intervention designed on the basis of World Health Organization guidelines. Data collection followed by intervention was conducted at baseline, 1 month and 3 months; at 6 months, only data were taken without intervention.
Results: About 90 % of the mothers were from the age group 16-30 years and most (93 %) of them were agricultural laborers. A majority (> 62%) of the mothers were not educated. Educational interventions brought about significant improvement in knowledge, attitude and practice at 1st, 2nd and 3rd follow-up. The median scores of knowledge, attitude and practice increased from 14, 7, 6 to 26, 9, 13, respectively, due to repeated interventions. Furthermore, interventions strengthened the correlation between knowledge, attitude and practice.
Conclusion: Intervention was beneficial in improving mothers’ knowledge, attitude and practice regarding diarrhea and its management.