Health care seeking for Childhood Diarrhea in Developing Countries: Evidence from Seven Sites in Africa and Asia

Nasrin, D., Wu, Y., Blackwelder, W. C., Farag, T. H., Saha, D., Sow, S. O., Alonso, P. L., Breiman, R. F., Sur, D., Faruque, A. S. G., Zaidi, A. K. M., Biswas, K., van Eijk, Anna ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1635-1289, Walker, D. G., Levine, M. M. and Kotloff, K. L. (2013) 'Health care seeking for Childhood Diarrhea in Developing Countries: Evidence from Seven Sites in Africa and Asia'. American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Vol 89, Issue Supp 1, pp. 3-12.

Preview

Text Am_J_Trop_Med_Hyg_89_sup1_3-12.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial. Download (509kB)

Abstract

We performed serial Health Care Utilization and Attitudes Surveys (HUASs) among caretakers of children ages 0–59 months randomly selected from demographically defined populations participating in the Global Enteric Multicenter Study (GEMS), a case-control study of moderate-to-severe diarrhea (MSD) in seven developing countries. The surveys aimed to estimate the proportion of children with MSD who would present to sentinel health centers (SHCs) where GEMS case recruitment would occur and provide a basis for adjusting disease incidence rates to include cases not seen at the SHCs. The proportion of children at each site reported to have had an incident episode of MSD during the 7 days preceding the survey ranged from 0.7% to 4.4% for infants (0–11 months of age), from 0.4% to 4.7% for toddlers (12–23 months of age), and from 0.3% to 2.4% for preschoolers (24–59 months of age). The proportion of MSD episodes at each site taken to an SHC within 7 days of diarrhea onset was 15–56%, 17–64%, and 7–33% in the three age strata, respectively. High cost of care and insufficient knowledge about danger signs were associated with lack of any care-seeking outside the home. Most children were not offered recommended fluids and continuing feeds at home. We have shown the utility of serial HUASs as a tool for optimizing operational and methodological issues related to the performance of a large case-control study and deriving population-based incidence rates of MSD. Moreover, the surveys suggest key targets for educational interventions that might improve the outcome of diarrheal diseases in low-resource settings.

Item Type:	Article
Subjects:	W General Medicine. Health Professions > Health Services. Patients and Patient Advocacy > W 85 Patients. Attitude and compliance WA Public Health > Health Problems of Special Population Groups > WA 395 Health in developing countries WA Public Health > Health Administration and Organization > WA 590 Health education, Health communication WS Pediatrics > Diseases of Children and Adolescents > By System > WS 312 Diarrheal disorders
Faculty: Department:	Clinical Sciences & International Health > Clinical Sciences Department
Digital Object Identifer (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.4269/ajtmh.12-0749
Depositing User:	Lynn Roberts-Maloney
Date Deposited:	26 Nov 2014 16:35
Last Modified:	16 Aug 2019 13:40
URI:	https://archive.lstmed.ac.uk/id/eprint/4600

Statistics

View details

Actions (login required)

Edit Item