Assessment of maternal health care seeking behaviors toward treatment of acute diarrhea for children in jeddah

A cross-sectional analytic study was adopted to estimate the prevalence of acute diarrhea, assess the mothers’ health care seeking behaviors toward treatment of acute diarrhea and their predictors in children who attended the well-baby and vaccination clinics of Ministry of health primary health care centers in Jeddah. An interview Arabic questionnaire was utilized for data collection.This study included 280 mothers with their children. The results show almost half (49.3%) of the studied children were one year or less. Eighty eight percent of the studied mothers recognized the correct definition of diarrhea. Children who had acute attack of diarrhea was 32.5% while 67.5% did not had acute diarrhea attack. Among the children with acute attack 75.8% had at least had one attack. Sixty-six (72.5%) of the 91 mothers of children with acute diarrhea visited health facilities. Most of them visited the health facilities because the child did not improve. Previous experience with similar illness was found to be the only reasonthat significantly associated with visiting health facilities by the mothers.