Maternal Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices towards Prevention and Management of Child Diarrhoea in Urban and Rural Maseru, Lesotho

Aim: To compare the knowledge, attitudes and practices of mothers in the prevention and management of child diarrhoea, in rural and urban settings of Maseru.

Methodology: This cross-sectional study was carried out in the Domiciliary (Urban) and Tlali (Rural) Health centres in Maseru, within the period of February to May, 2017. Data was collected from 458 mothers/caregivers, with 299 (65%) and 159 (35%) from urban and rural settings respectively. Scores were assigned for the level of knowledge, attitudes, and practices. STATA 14.1 was applied to determine the strengths of associations between categories of the maternal characteristics and the outcome variables.

Results: Aggregation of participants’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices response reveal a statistical significant association with residence. The maternal age range of 30-39 years, P = .03, and mothers with three (3) children, P = .02 were significantly associated with the knowledge of prevention and management of diarrhoea in the rural area. In the urban area, mothers with tertiary education, P = .04, employed, P = .001, unemployed, P = .004, and all categories of monthly income were significantly associated with the knowledge of prevention and management of diarrhoea. For the urban setting, an association between mothers’ attitudes and monthly income between M500 – M1399, P = .05 was observed. The practices of mothers/caregivers in the prevention and management of diarrhoea showed no significant differences in the light of the socio-demographic variables in both settings.

Conclusion: The study revealed low level of maternal knowledge, attitudes and practices in prevention and management of child diarrhea in the rural and urban settings, hence the need to strengthen the existing health education messages on both settings.