What do mothers know about Acute Respiratory Infection: a case from eastern Nepal

Abstract

A descriptive study was conducted in Eastern Nepal with an objective to assess
the knowledge of mothers about acute respiratory infection (ARI). Two hundred
mothers, who had currently at least a child under five, from randomly selected
households were interviewed. 50.5% of the mothers correctly knew the signs and
symptoms of ARI without pneumonia; 45% had mixed responses. Only 2.5% of the
responding mothers reported to have knowledge about danger signs of ARI, 39.5% had
wrong answers and 12% did not know about the danger signs of ARI. Regarding
knowledge about home care management, 50.5% had correct responses. Both the
correct and wrong responses about knowledge of ARI were more or less equally
distributed across the educational level, ethnicity and age group of responding
mothers. It is concluded that knowledge of mothers about ARI in general is low,
particularly very low on danger signs of ARI. This might have led to delayed specific
treatment of children with ARI, which could have resulted in various complications
including death.